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Things

11/7/2008 in bloggity!, television, trombone, writing | 4 comments

Over breakfast this morning I indulged in some idle chat with my older son.

“What should we get Daddy for Christmas?” I asked.

He thought for a while.

“A rattle,” he said, finally.
“A rattle?”
“Yes. He would like that.”
“Okay. What about Grandma and Grandad?”

Slight hesitation. “A video!”
“Oh yeah? A video of what?”
“The Jungle Book!”
“Well, what would YOU like for Christmas?”

No hesitation. “Thomas the Tank Engine. And Gordon. And Percy. And… ”

We have hit Maximum Train Obsession Velocity, folks. We are currently watching I Love Toy Trains 9 and 10 twice a day. (and now that we have I Love Toy Trains 1 – 8 and 11 and 12 to look forward to, I can put off Vonnegut theme week for another few months. This is something of a relief, as I was feeling woefully unprepared.)

Another time, my pretties, I will extol the virtues of I Love Toy Trains.

It is amazing to me that small children can tell apart the many freaky-faced trains of Thomas The Tank Engine (especially when same small children are unable to remember how to wash their hands or not to tackle their smaller siblings or how to ask nicely for a drink but I suppose it is like me being able to remember all the words to Funky Cold Medina but unable to remember whether I am 34 or 35 years old without counting on my fingers) but it does make me glad that Trombone does not yet watch television with commercials because someone is doing something right in the marketing department of the universe and with luck we can avoid letting Trombone find out that there are Elmos out there that talk. The flat, paper, book kind are bad enough. He actually is not very interested in the Thomas and Friends on TV, he just likes the books and the actual trains that fit in his hand.

I dislike Thomas and his cohorts pretty intensely but I save all my hate for that asshole boss Sir Topham Hatt. Someday when Trombone has had a few asshole bosses he might see it my way.

Here there is a most hilarious account of a live Thomas show god help us all. I remember reading a blog post somewhere months ago that detailed why and how Thomas is so awful but damned if I can find it now.

Because I am 34 (or is it 35?) I do watch commercials and I do SO VERY MUCH want the Barbie cruise ship. There is a spinning cake platter thingee. And the Barbies all go dancing under a disco ball at night because it is a cruise ship! So much better than that camper van they were hawking when I was a kid.

In other news, I am almost at 8,000 words in my November novel. If I can make it to 10,000 by the end of the weekend, I will keep going. I had to take a few minutes to sketch out plot because I usually write fiction by sitting down for a few hours and letting my hand just write. The plot generally takes shape when I do it this way. Character-driven, as they say. As I only have 45 minute increments in which to write, these days, the plot doesn’t go anywhere because the characters are wasting all their time talking about which car to take. Guys! Just GO already! So I’m killing one off. Otherwise I was going to be writing a gay romance – a male gay romance – and I just don’t know if I should be doing that.

Or if I could.

Gay Thomas the Tank Engine fan fiction? Maybe? Not?

My Idle Hands Encountered the Devil Television Today

10/13/2008 in idiots, television | 8 comments

Dear The Learning Channel,

I watched part of two episodes of your show, A Baby Story today.

I have seen your show before. It’s a cleaned up, pretty version of labour and delivery and it always features a happy ending. I have actually heard it referred to as birth porn for just that reason. I used to be unemployed and without children and it was pretty gripping television, what with the happy ending and all and the triumph of woman over pain and the sneak peeks into American hospital rooms.

However I now have two children of my own (so I am an Expert) and though my labours were different from each other in many ways, they both shared two very important characteristics: I was respected and trusted to my process throughout. These are characteristics I think are missing from your show and I think this absence is detrimental to your viewers, many of whom are probably developing from you their own ideas about what childbirth will be like and who would benefit from a balanced portrayal of same.

The two episodes I saw today depressed and disgusted me. Both featured women whose labours were declared “non-progressive” and so their doctors recommended cesarean sections. In the case of the first woman, her perfectly normal baby was removed from her uterus and then removed from the room and only when her own mother asked that the baby be brought in, did the nurse bring the baby to her mother.

The second woman had an epidural placed to help with her pain and then was put in bed to dilate, you know, as though she were a machine. After several hours of her just lying there, waiting for something to happen, her doctor examined her cervix and said, “You’re 7 centimetres and the baby is still quite high up. Right now it’s looking like we’ll probably have to do a c-section but you know, I’ve been surprised before. I’ll come back and check you in a while.”

When he returned, a scant hour later, he declared that she was still 7 centimetres and the baby was still high up. He pronounced that it was time to get that baby out because – and this is what really got my hackles up – “…you’re not dilating and the baby is still quite high. This is nature’s way of saying it’s not going to happen.”

At this point, The Learning Network, I truly did want to leap into my television set and kick that pig fucker doctor right in the junk.

She was given paralytic drugs, made to stay in bed, as much as told that she probably wouldn’t be able to deliver her baby vaginally but hey – maybe! – but her doctor doubted it, told that she would probably have to have major surgery and then left alone: SURPRISE! she didn’t dilate, SURPRISE! the baby didn’t move, SURPRISE! her body shut itself down.

This doctor wants to invoke Nature? Ignorant pig fucker! Nature intended this woman to be on her feet, using gravity to move the baby down, using her body the way her body was built to be used. Nature intended for her to be supported by people who know what they are talking about. Nature intended she be given the time and space and information she needed in order to have her baby safely, successfully, in her own time.

And I have no problem with c-sections. They save lives. They are sometimes necessary. And yes I know the show is edited and I did not see the whole story. Maybe at the end, she sued him. I don’t know.

However I would like to propose a companion show for A Baby Story, working title: Doula Saves the Day! Imagine the style of Nanny 911 (the show where the bossy nanny comes and whips a badly behaved family into shape) taking place in a hospital setting within the framework of a woman’s labour and delivery day. A doula, a non-medical support person for a labouring woman and her partner, would be available to intervene in a Nanny 911 fashion, should a woman being filmed for A Baby Story think it warranted.

Here is the episode I just described being transformed into Doula Saves the Day! When the doctor comes in the room and offers his opinion, the husband says, “We want a doula!” After a commercial break, the doula magically arrives and helps the woman to her feet (or better yet is called before she gets the epidural so that she can request a walking epidural) and takes her for a walk around the hospital. She helps her into the shower or bath and lets her labour in water. She gets the woman a yoga ball to sit on and crouch over.

When the doctor comes back in an hour, the woman has progressed to 8 cms and the baby is lowering in her pelvis. The doula convinces the doctor they should wait another hour before thinking about a c-section. Within the hour, the woman is fully dilated, a variety of positions for pushing are proposed (only one of which is lying prone on the bed) and when it is time, the woman delivers her baby vaginally with the support of her husband and doula by her side. She holds her baby right away.

(And if people take to this you could do an Xtreme Doula Saves the Day!, where the doula takes the doctor out behind the hospital and kneecaps him.)

I think the experience of birth can be so many things and can be influenced by so many factors. I really think the model I’ve described above would result in fewer unnecessary surgeries and would also serve to show the viewing public that there is an alternative to “shut up and do what the doctor says, you ignorant slut.”

Most sincerely, awaiting your positive response,

Cheesefairy

Emergency Cookies!

9/24/2008 in bloggity!, food, television | 1 comment

I found myself at a new food-concerned blog today, called everybody likes sandwiches and I was happily scrolling through lots of delicious recipes when I saw a link to an oatmeal cookie recipe. So I followed. It was a post from 2006 and the oatmeal cookie recipe was in honour of that night’s episode of America’s Next Top Model. And there I was, reading it ON ANTM NIGHT. What could I do? Trombone thought he’d died & gone to heaven. “Oh, I LIKE cookies,” he affirmed as he stole chunks of butter while my back was turned. (the recipe calls for canola oil and claims it’s just as good as butter but I actually didn’t have any canola oil OH WELL) Excellent recipe. Delicious.

So go, do it. It’ll take you 20 minutes. Make oatmeal cookies and eat them while you laugh at the supermodel wannabes who can’t eat oatmeal cookies because they are afraid to eat. Especially eat them while you watch the supermodel wannabes pose for some wretched semi-submerged under water “smile with your eyes” photos.

Hey, over here. COOKIES.

The End.

Don’t Worry: It’s Only One of Two Posts about America’s Next Top Model

9/17/2008 in books, hair, television | 5 comments

I realized today that I only have to watch tonight’s The Makeover episode of cycle 11 of America’s Next Top Model, which I am not so much watching as, well, scrubbing off in the shower, and then I don’t have to watch any other episodes until the season finale. Because the rest is just silly filler.

(Incidentally, as this is Cycle 11, do you think that means that after Cycle 12 we will have completed one Tyra year?)

Having seen half of it, the best things about The Makeover Episode are:

- Tyra hosts a princess pizza party for the hopefuls and tells everyone that she is awesome. Also, she is wearing a pantsuit.
- A pantsuit.
- Then, everyone on set drops big bowls of acid (wait for it to load, you will see what I mean) and Miss Tyra eats a poison apple and goes to sleep. Mr Jay kisses her and takes her away. She won’t be back till judging. Do we dare cheer?
- No, of course we do not. We are sad! No Tyra!
- Makeovers are interesting but I am mostly interested that they gave Elina MY HAIR and she is complaining about it.
- Although I am also fascinated that it took two fancy salon people to make hair that I did with a home bleaching kit and a bottle of red hair dye.
- I guess I will be applying for a job at Neil George salon post haste.

In other news, America’s First Next Top Model – no, not Miss Tyra, but Adrianne Curry – has a stalker who sent her expensive shoes. Pish! Stop it! Keep the shoes at your house!

That’s what I would say to my expensive-shoe-sending stalker. If I had one.

All right, y’all, farewell. I must go continue reading an excellent novel by Ivan E. Coyote called “Bow Grip.”

Scattered Roundup of Wrong Things

7/26/2008 in blood, drink, food, television | 6 comments

First o’ all: I turned on the TV recently. Wrong. It’s July. There’s nothing on. Except the shows that are on after my bedtime, like Swingtown, of which I enjoyed the first episode so record on, you crazy PVR. Instead of anything even trashily interesting, I was subjected to the following items for sale which commercials have probably been in rotation for at least 3 months but I have not seen them:

Chocolate “drizzle”

WTF Tim Hortons? OK, in general, WTF Tim Hortons. But in this case, WTF – your Iced Capp Supreme features chocolate DRIZZLE? It’s not sauce. It’s not topping. It’s not syrup. It’s drizzle. And you want me to eat it.

No. I will not eat it, Tim Hortons. Drizzle is not food. And it super-jet-engine isn’t dessert.

A sandwich at Subway made with lobster

Is it just me or is the thought of anything seafood related being sold under those fluorescent lights within the bright yellow enclave that is Subway, mashed together with random toppings by a lightly gloved, minimum-waged and rightly disgruntled sandwich “artist” (have, in my life, met just one actual artist, who wrote my name in mustard on my sandwich) just a brief hop before “food poisoning so bad you will write about it on your weblog but you will still be on the toilet while you do so”?

Tampons now give you 360 degree protection. (when 180 degrees just ISN’T ENOUGH)

The hypothesis is that Active Women need clingier tampons. Because if you are doing your favourite sport (presumably not horseback riding, which is still safe to do with a regular tampon, just like those little booklets from grade 6 told us, although not ever having horseback rid whilst menstruating I do have to say I think the additional crotch protection of a “bulky pad” would be appreciated rather than the rhythmic “joust! joust!” of a tampon every time you slap your butt down on that saddle but hey, like I said, not an equestrianne over here.) there is the slim (to none?) chance that your tampon will just … what? Drop out? Like I said to SA, only if you’ve had 7 kids will that happen and if you have 7 kids odds are you’re not exercising or that just getting up in the morning is exercise enough not to mention you probably haven’t had need for a tampon in at least 7 years. Perhaps in today’s world of Extreme Sport, there are sports where you might lose a tampon. But knowing what I know about the musculature involved in the vaginal canal, I really hope no Sport is that Extreme.

Dear feminine product people: It’s been a while, I know, since I wrote. But I still hate you and your scare mongering.
Love, cheesefairy

The celebrity show hostess in her 17 lbs of makeup and tight clothes on national TV pitying Miley Cyrus (who?) because she (Miley) is being forced by Hollywood to Grow Up Too Fast as evidenced by her (Miley’s) recent bare torsoed cover of Vanity Fair. Followed by panel discussion of same. Same old same old kids today nonsense.

How about you put your sweats on and throw your hair in a ponytail and come to work without makeup. If they still let you go on the air, then you can go ahead and lead the young girls of today by example by letting your journalistic skills speak for themselves without your Hotness muddying the waters.

Not on TV but at the park and oh were my nards chafed.

Woman with her daughter, roughly 2.5? years old walks past me and Trombone, who is digging in the sand pile. The sand pile features those sit-on-em little, manual bulldozers. For digging in the sand. The little girl heads over full tilt and her mom grabs her hand and says, “Oh, those are kind of boyish. Let’s go over to the swings.”

Good gravy. I can’t believe you just said that. Is this swing to the head GIRLISH enough for you?

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