Mary Versus the Trumpeting Legions of Apathy

Manatees are the endangered animal that I would most like to punch. Not in a violent way, just like a Father O'Conner-teaching-troubled-youths-to-box kind of way. I mean, do you know any other punching-bag-shaped marine animal?

I'm an aunt, again! Is this not the cutest newborn little fellow you ever did see? Doesn't he only faintly resemble a frog? David and Margaret have produced a wonderful little spawn. I like him awfully. He used to be in our Rock Band group, the Opportunity Costs. So now, let's talk babies: babies are cute, but not much else. I mean, what can you do with a baby besides just say how cute it is and hold it? Maybe as a paperweight, but as Matt said in the DC sketch...they'd only get their nastiness everywhere. Maybe because people think babies are supposed to be paperweights, they aren't having very many of them. Right now the US is teetering on a 2.1 fertility rate. No good, guys, no good. Margaret and Dave are doing their part--are you? Dave and Margaret will be suffering lots of costs in terms of accounting-type baby expenses--itty-bitty widdle blankies and itty-bitty widdle clothes--for the next 18+ years, but they also will be making sacrifices (or opportunity cost...

Yes, it's late, but I've been busy. And that's the point, isn't it? After coming back from almost an entire week in San Francisco going to composition conference panels, seeing famous rhetoricians in compromising states of intoxication and eating myself silly at the great curry place across from the hotel, I'm back to work. On a Divine Comedy show week. When I need to return several papers and an econ exam to my students. And write a ten-page paper. And prepare 28 cupcakes and a yellow cake with chocolate frosting for a bake sale. Why, some of my friends who aren't in school pointed out, am I doing this? I don't know-- I like being busy. Some of the least-pleasant times of my life were the weeks leading up to going into the MTC : I wasn't in school, I couldn't get a job, and everyone I knew had these important sorts of things to keep them busy while I sat at home and watched back-to-back-to-back-to-back episodes of Law and Order. On the contrary side...

I told you all it was coming. This week we'll hear it for the ladies. While men may have a more impressive list of accomplishments and famous scientists/artists/business leaders etc., women have endured more than men, generally speaking. In fact, in the vain of Mary Wollstonecraft, I'd argue that women's relative mediocrity is, in some way, a testament to the oppression that they have born. Why should we try to rehabilitate letter-writers and interior designers into great authors and artists when the fact that they were taught to be stupid and small-minded is one of the greatest wrongs ever done? As Wollstonecraft pointed out, women have been, for decades de facto inferior to men and most of that because of the societal influences that insisted that they view themselves that way. So it's hard to have any conversation about how wonderful women are without first awknowledging that women's rights have been truncated in almost every culture in the world, and even in som...

Today is Fast Sunday and, as usual, I was hungry. But I really only go hungry this once and maybe if I forget my lunch at home, but did you know that 12 million kids are chronically hungry? That sucks. Kids should have food. So what am I going to do about it? I'll tell you what: BAKE SALE! Mark your calendars, ladies and gents, because 8:00 Monday the 16th of March I will be participating in a Super-Mega-Tasty Bake-Sale for the Childrens. We'll hold it in my apartment complex (Terrace apts--770 N University Ave) and there will be beautiful cupcakes and cookies and this chocolate zucchini bread which is said to be D-lite-full! I know this is FHE time, but what better treat than to buy something to help kids eat? How awesome is that? So come by, buy cupcakes, or just donate and help people who are hungry--not be.