Image by Dekuwa via Flickr

This week, the Supreme Court ruled that a California Law banning the sale of violent video games to minors violates those minors’ first amendment rights, and was – as a lower court had determined – unconstitutional.

Justice Antonin Scalia argued that while sexual content has long been regulated for children, there is no precedent for limiting children’s access to violent content. The Court determined that the government’s “legitimate power to protect children from harm… does not include a free-floating power to restrict the ideas to which children may be exposed.”

So what the Supreme Court is saying is, kids shouldn’t be exposed to sex, but if they rack up points by shooting someone – more points for shooting them in the head, and even more for shooting them in their private parts while playing a video game (in Bulletstorm), or if they shoot up a street full of Russian civilians whose blood spatters everywhere (Modern Warfare 2) — well, that’s freedom of speech.

I find this argument ridiculous on a number of levels.

1. Precedent Schmecedent. Just because the Courts haven’t done something before, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it now.  Take child protection laws.  For more than a century, there were no such laws.  Should we have allowed the continued abuse of children in the workplace, or at the hands of their parents simply because we’d never limited it before?

2. Degree matters.  The violence in the Red Shoes (which Justice Scalia referenced in his decision) is that of a girl forced to dance herself to death. Snow White?  A poison apple. Compare that to a child playing a character that beats someone to death with a hammer – with splattering blood and all — and who gets points for it! Not the same thing.

3. Consistency Counts  The law they struck down was pretty specific, it defined violent games as those “in which the range of options available to a player includes killing, maiming, dismembering or sexually assaulting an image of a human being” in a way that was “patently offensive,” appealed to minors’ “deviant or morbid interests” and lacked “serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.”

So Scalia’s argument (And Ruth Ginsberg!! How could you agree with this?) that these video games are conveying “ideas and even social messages” just doesn’t work.

4. Obscene isn’t just about Sex. Doesn’t  content that includes the “entertaining” depiction of raping a prostitute then killing her when you’re done (Grand Theft Auto) seem obscene to you? Seriously.  How much more obscene does it get?

4. Do the Research  Do violent video games encourage violence in kids?

Read this excerpt from the Wall Street Journal:

Many academics and medical professionals say yes, though not all agree. The  American Academy of Pediatrics came out with a statement in 2009 concluding that exposure to different forms of media, including video games but also TV, movies and music, “can contribute to aggressive behavior, desensitization to violence, nightmares and fear of being harmed.” The American Psychological Association takes a similar stance  in a resolution on violence in video games and advocates reducing the amount of violence in them.

True, there are some studies that show no correlation.  But the prevailing wisdom is that it’s unhealthy for kids to be exposed to graphic violence.  In the case of video games – to graphic violence in which they virtually participate.

So what’s next?   Hopefully, much like the Motion Picture Association – the video games association will monitor themselves, and limit childrens’ access to such games.  But in the end,  it’s up to parents to be – well – parents, and monitor what their kids are watching and playing.

Cause otherwise, they might be exposed to such terrible violence as a princess biting into a poison apple, right?

I mean, they’ve already got a head start; you can’t throw a wimpy little kid without hitting a “news” piece about cyber bullying.  And I’m not denying that it’s a real issue.  I know all about the Boston area teen who killed herself after prolonged bullying – cyber and otherwise. (read this excellent piece about whether or not cyberbullying was at fault about this story here.)  I know about the college student who killed himself after having a sexual encounter webcasted by his roommate.  So before people start getting all hysterical on me: I know cyber bullying is real -  and is  real problem.

I just can’t help but wonder if it’s as big a problem as the massive, endless media coverage would have us believe. And I also wonder if all of the hype, all of the endless chatter, doesn’t add to the problem, rather than put a stop to it. I think that labeling every incident of unkind behavior between children bullying, dilutes the meaning of the word, and anesthetizes our children to real bullying – both online and off.  Is it the boy crying virtual wolf?

Recently, we had bullying expert Barbara Coloroso come to speak at our school.  She had a lot of good things to say about bullying – how to deal with bullies, how to teach kids the difference between tattling (saying something that’s only going to get someone into trouble) and Telling (saying something that’s going to get someone out of trouble.) She was funny, and dynamic, and filled with shocking facts and figures.  She also equated bullying with Nazism.  And that’s where she lost me. To me, that supposed parallel – between genocide and bullying – pretty much exemplified the problem: cyber bullying is serious, but it sure as hell isn’t as bad as genocide. But if you measured the seriousness of  cyber-bullying  by the sheer amount of media, community and educational attention it receives – compared to, for instance, what’s happening in The Ivory Coast or what went on in Rwanda – well, you’d think bullying was worse. Ridiculous.

Pushing, shoving, repeated taunts.  These are bullying behaviors. The systematic torture and murder of millions? That is not bullying, it is genocide.  There is a difference in scale.  And it matters.

Coloroso said, when I asked her to define bullying, that every single instance of unkindness between people is bullying. When I asked if there needed to be intent or any kind of continued pattern for unkindness to constitute bullying, she said no. “You only have to shove a kid’s head down the toilet once to be a bully.” she said.

Well, OK.  But what about the one time one girl tells another her shoes are dorky?  Or one boy tells another he smells?  Those aren’t nice behaviors – they’re mean – but to me, they’re not bullying behaviors because they happened once. Meanness, to me, does not equal bullying. Coloroso kept repeating something along these lines “Don’t tell me boys will be boys and girls will be mean, because it doesn’t have to be that way.”  Well, maybe it does.  Some childhood meanness is entirely developmentally appropriate. A child may do something mean unwittingly, because he or she is learning how to navigate socially. Children may be mean on purpose, too, but only because they are still figuring out how to behave at all, are testing the limits of what’s acceptable, or “trying on” a persona for a moment or two.  As long as parents, teachers and others in positions of authority address it and talk to the kids about it, explaining what is and isn’t acceptable, I don’t think the bully label is necessary or helpful. Kids can be mean, and they need to learn not to be, but to label every kid who does or says something mean a bully…well, there would be an awful lot of bullies around.  And an awful lot of those kids would never live down the label.

Are there real bullies?  Absolutely.  Are there real cyber bullies?  You bet.  But it does feel like the crisis of the moment.  I get it – back in the day, when a kid was called a name on the playground, it stayed on the playground.  Now, unkind words – and worse – will live on the internet forever.   There is – as I said before – a question of scale.  But ask anyone who was bullied as a child – did the feelings about it go away just because it’s not on the internet?  I can answer that. No.  I was bullied all through sixth grade by a boy who’d been held back so many times he towered over everyone. I still remember it vividly – internet or no.

Today, people are making a big deal about cyber bullying because it’s a socially acceptable way to attack technology as a whole.  Technology is the big bad unknown that our children are growing up with.  We don’t understand it, we don’t fully know it’s power, it’s new, it’s different.  And just like any prejudice – the bias against technology is born because people don’t like what they don’t understand.

I’m all for teaching kids to use the internet responsibly, for teaching them to be kind.  But I’m not all for attacking the technology that brings communities together, allows oppressed people to fight back, and puts a seemingly infinite amount of information out there for all. I want my kids to embrace technology – not to be afraid of it.  I want them to know how to protect themselves, to know how to behave online- but I don’t want the entirety of cyberspace to be demonized and labeled .

So stop picking on technology, everyone, or I’ll have to label you all bullies.

But it did get me thinking.  There are a lot of times I feel I’m just not being given 100%.  And I’m gonna sue:

1. My Children – for only listening 50% of the time (and I’m being generous here)  For only picking up after themselves 20% of the time.  For making me feel like I must have done something wrong to deserve…whatever it is they’re dishing out, just about 100% of the time they’re dishing…whatever it is they’re dishing. (Whew!)

2. My Body – for taking 25% longer to recover from a night out with the girls.  For gaining 2 of% my body weight every year since I turned 40.

3. The Weather – for snowing 80% more than I’d like it to this winter. For being 87% too humid for my frizz-ball of a head in the summer, and for making Fall and Spring – the most tolerable of seasons – last only 20% of the year.

4. Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann for only looking into the camera 5% of the time during her “official” Tea Party response to Barack Obama’s State of the Union address.  Also – for only telling 10% of the truth about how much responsibility the Republican party has for the current financial crisis.  And for wearing 30% too much make-up.

5. The Cast of Jersey Shore – For being on 100% too many magazine covers, for being 100% more famous than they deserve to be.  For drinking 110%  too much.  For taking up even .1% of my consciousness.

6. The word “Like” as in “he was like…and then I was like” for being used by 90% of the intelligent, educated people I know (including me), when it’s not even .001% grammatically correct.

7. Bagels – for having 60% more calories than I thought they did, and for being the ruin of the diets of perhaps 88% of the Jewish women in New York City currently trying to lose ten pounds.

8. Fashion Magazines – for writing tons of articles about how horrible eating disorders are, about how you can be beautiful at any size, and then using models who are painfully skinny 100% of the time.

9. Justin Beiber. No percentages here.  He just bugs me.

10. People (especially men) who say “hmmmm” a lot when you’re talking. Because Hmm is really only man-speak for “I am not listening to anything you say. Damn, the Lakers lost again!”

11. Acronyms – because – FYI -about 80% of the time,  it takes longer to decipher the GD things than it would to just write them down in the first place. IMHO. (LOL)

12. The phrase LOL – see Justin Beiber, above.

I figure most of these lawsuits are a slam dunk. Though I might have to sue myself under the “people who use cliches in their writing” category for putting that way.

What’s that?  You don’t like my list?  So sue me.

“Where did you hear that word?” I wanted to know.

“Puberty Ed.”

The fifth graders at my kids’ uber-expensive private school have started what used to be called Sex Ed, but is now called Puberty Ed (evidently, it’s OK to teach the kids the word “p***y” but not to use the word Sex), and a big part of the curriculum, it seems, is telling the names of things.

“We learn the medical term, the slang term, and the vulgar term.”

Well, then.

“You know what else they call it, Mommy?  A c***! And did you know that the F-word means sex?”

That’s it! Too much for me!

I’m all for sex ed.  I wrote a post a while back about not telling my kids the facts of life because I didn’t think they were ready to hear them.  But when they were old enough,(for them, that was age 9), I did tell them. I’m not a prude, or squeamish about the subject. I want my kids – my daughter especially – to feel comfortable with their own sexuality.  I want them not to think of sex as dirty or shameful.  What I don’t want, is for them to be learning the words p**** and c*** in school.  From their teachers.

Here’s how it works: the teachers explain the “real” words for the reproductive and sexual organs, the sexual act and various and sundry other words having to do with puberty.  Then they ask the kids what words they know.  And it turns out, they know A LOT of words.

I know that I can’t protect my kids from foul language forever.  And maybe it is better for them to learn the words in a safe environment, where they can understand how they’re different from the “real” words, and why they shouldn’t be used.  But maybe not.  Maybe learning those words in school somehow validates the words themselves.  I think the theory is that letting the kids say the words in a controlled, monitored classroom environment takes away their clandestine thrill. But I’m wondering if all it does is teach them bad words.

I like that school has taught my ten year olds what’s about to happen to their bodies.  I like that the whole process of how babies are made has been de-mystified and de-giggle-fied for them.  But language is a powerful thing.  Words matter.  They don’t teach them bad grammar so they know what good grammar is. They don’t learn the N-word during Black History Month,  or the K-word during the unit on the Holocaust.  Teaching words like those – and like the ones my kids learned at school this week – only perpetuates their use.

It might be naïve to think that simply by not teaching kids bad, demeaning, prejudicial or offensive language that language will just go away.  But wouldn’t it be a nice goal? Wouldn’t it be nice to try?

This morning, with all that miserable ice and the frozen rain, that last little incline to the bus stop felt like a trek to the summit of some bleak asphalt mountaintop, but we made it and queued up with everyone else. (Yes, we ‘queue up.’ We get on at the first stop every morning and we line up. So sue us for being so British.)

Luckily, the bus arrived quickly and the kids and I shuffled along with everyone else to get on. Fast. (Did I mention it was cold?) And then, she arrived. The Woman Without Children. The WWC just walked up, passed the line, and started to get on the bus.

“Excuse me.” I say. No reaction. “Excuse me!” I yell. She turns.

“There’s a line.” I say.

“Yeah, well I’m cold,” she announces, as if that settles it.

“I’m cold,” said the three year old in front of us to his Mom.

“Yeah! We’re all cold.” The mob was getting angry. Mothers were banding together against her. Kids were gathering up snowballs to run her out of town.

Only not really. We all just stood there. Shocked, or maybe just frozen, and watched WWC get on the bus before all of us well-behaved, setting an example for our children Moms and our Popsicle toed kids.

I was enraged all day. But I guarantee she never gave it another thought. Guess there are all kinds of ways to be cold.

Not Me. Not my kid. But look! She’s a mom!

Here’s something I’ve noticed at Mom Blogger events: to most PR companies, “Mom” means “mother of a baby.”  At most Mom-Blog events, all of the products are geared towards babies.  It was such a relief at Blissdom this past weekend, to see Unilever there with a campaign geared toward tweens – Don’t Fret the Sweat.  It was a deodorant campaign, true.  Not exactly sexy, but at least it acknowledged that not all moms have babies.  My kids are loooong out of diapers, and I’m still a mother. Really, I am.

It’s odd that this “all moms are baby-moms” thing bothers me, given that it also bothers me that companies pigeon-hole me as a Mommy Blogger in the first place, even though I almost never write about my kids. I think it’s because assuming that every mom in the universe needs a diaper bag demeans all mothers.  Let me explain.

How many of you stay at home Moms with school age children have been asked “What do you do all day?”  As if, once your children are gone from the house for a few hours a day, you’re home free.  Well, I’ll tell you what we  do all day: a lot. We keep the house in order, we do the grocery shopping, we get the kids to school, and to their dance classes, and basketball games, and playdates, and piano lessons.  Then we get them home and feed them dinner (that we cooked) and  help them with their homework.  We wait for the plumber.  We do the laundry. We remember to send Grandma a birthday card.  We volunteer at school.  Oh, and a lot of us also write blogs, keep up with friends online and through Twitter, and manage relationships with brands and sponsors to bring in a little extra cash.

That’s what we do all day.

But somehow, the world has once again conspired to minimize what we do.  When your children are diaper-aged, they patronize you by assuming that all you are is a bottle feeding, diaper changing, spit-up stained cliche. But at least they recognize you, that you’re doing something.  The world at large knows (or at least thinks they know) who you are. And then, when your children are at school, they suddenly assume you are….what?  Not a mother anymore? Just some person filling up their days with talk shows, lunches and vacuum cleaners? It’s as if, once the baby stage is over, they have no idea what to make of us. As if being a mother to babies was the sole defining aspect of our identities, and once those babies are grown, we no longer exist. I don’t like either side: being solely defined by my motherhood, or having motherhood – an essential part of my identity – discounted.

Motherhood is motherhood at any stage.

And if that’s not enough of a reason for PR companies and marketers to think twice about me, how about this:  the tween market is huge.  Look at this from MSN:

Twenty million strong nationwide, tweens — kids ages 8 to 14 (…) — now flex $43 billion worth of annual spending power,

So even if you think that moms of school aged kids sit around and eat bon bons all day, you should also know that we have access to those coveted Tweens.  That those tweens are still young enough to care what we have to say. And that all of those tweens have parents who care what we have to say, too.

Motherhood is hard enough – just read this post -  without feeling like you have to defend it simply because your children have grown up a little.  What would you rather?  That we kill off our young and make new babies every two years, just so you know how to categorize us? We are no less mothers than women who have young babies. (who, by the way, will also grow into school aged children.  Go figure.) Once a mother, always a mother.  And motherhood no more defines a woman when her children are babies than it does when they are adults.

I am woman. I am writer. I am blogger. Sister. Daughter. Wife. Business Woman. Friend. And yes, mother.

I will not be categorized or pigeon holed. Get used to it.

And if you paid any attention to it at all, you’d see that it made lots and lots of people very, very mad.

If you don’t know what happened, here’s a recap: Last year (I promise, this’ll be short) the Disney SMMoms Celebration (not conference) was invitation only.  Lots of people were upset about that.  It felt exclusionary.  And Very publicly, on Twitter, people complained that it was exclusionary, that they felt snubbed.  So this year, after months of teasers (from Disney) and rumors from everyone else, Disney announced that 2011’s limited space celebration would be first-come, first-serve. (Once you’re credentials were verified.)

They announced the date and time that registration would begin and we manned our lap-tops, iphones, and anything else that had internet-connectivity and were off to the races.

Only instead of a race, it was a frustrating waiting game.  You couldn’t get onto to the site.  Or you did, and then you got booted off.  Some of us spent hours trying to get registered.  And those of us who got through were asked for our blog names and urls, our professional and brand affiliations, our advertisers, our blog, twitter and facebook stats, and the names and age ranges of the people in our family.

The next day, the attendees were announced…and they looked suspiciously hand-picked.  One of my friends was told she registered too late, and by the time she did, the slots were all full.  But another friend, who didn’t get through until 30 minutes than that, was in.

So while no one knows for sure if all of the attendees were hand-picked, it certainly seems that way.  So why the hysterical rush? Why the charade (if it was one.)? Why not just tell people they would look through applications and pick?

Because all the Mom Bloggers would have complained, that’s why. We want to be valued, we want to be taken seriously, we want to be paid for our work.  But we also want don’t want to feel like there’s a popular club. We want to be one, big happy family. We’ve even gone so far as to include men in Mom blogging conferences that purport to be about empowering women.  We want every single one of us to feel equally valued and loved.

That’s awfully nice, but it doesn’t work that way.  If you want to have a big business like Disney to invite you to an event  – to effectively hire you to promote their brand – you have to have the goods.  In the blogging world, that means a minimum of 5000 unique page views a month, at least a 60 klout rating on Twitter, and a proven track record of working with companies (if you’re a business), generating buzz (through lots of comments, if your blog is personal) or both.

I looked at that list of people attending the conference.  And they’re the women I would want if I were a big company looking to get the word out.  They’re influencers.  They’re smart.  They’re funny.  Many of them are my friends.  I’m happy that they’re going.  And the truth is, my stats and my influence just don’t measure up to theirs.  They’re earned the right to go to this conference.

It seems to me that a lot of the people complaining about how this whole thing went forgot something very important: Disney wasn’t inviting everyone and their families down to Disney World because they’re nice.  It’s because they’re a business.  And they want – and need – a return on that investment of time, money, and hotel rooms.

Should they have misled all of us and taken all of our personal information in the process?  Of course not.  But shouldn’t we, collectively, take some responsibility too?  Last year Disney took a lot of flack from the Mom Blogging community for making the event invitation only.  That’s our fault. We should have understood that hard work, and good work reap rewards – like increased ad revenue, paid writing and speaking opportunities, and yes, even invitations to blog conferences.  By putting Disney in the position to have to defend doing what any other business dealing with any other group would do – take the best of the best – we set ourselves up, and put them in such an awkward position that there was almost no way they could have gotten it right.

As my friend Beccarama pointed out, not everyone gets to go to Harvard.  There’s a reason only people like Michael Bloomberg, Steve Jobs, and Warren Buffet are invited to the Sun Valley conference: they’ve earned it. Can you imagine every small business owner in America publicly whining about not being “picked” for that?

So in the end, I end up with this, I don’t approve of the questionable way Disney handled this whole thing.  I think it was unfair to put us all through that. But I don’t think we Mom Bloggers are blameless either. If we want to play in the big time, we have to act like big girls, and accept that while for many of us, Blogging is fun, and creative, and a way to be a part of a terrific community, for companies like Disney, it’s business.  And businesses don’t invite (really hire) everyone.   They pick the best of the best.

And that is fair.

The other day, I submitted a piece to a site  and – for the first time in my 20+ year writing career, it was rejected. (Although I was once fired from  Sally Jesse Rafael, because I “didn’t get the vibe.”  I took that as a compliment.) Part of the rejection was based on a technical reason, which I get.  But according to the email I received, it was also stylistic. The prick editor said I clearly hadn’t read the style guide, which would be fair enough — except that there isn’t one.  So I wrote back to the guy:

“As far as I can tell, there (is) no style guide in the (posting instructions)…. It would be helpful to me if you wouldn’t mind taking a moment to let me know what you like to see in game reviews….”

When I first got his response, I thought “Wow.  This guy really is an asshole.”  And then I thought, maybe I wasn’t being fair.  It is, after all, hard to determine tone in an email, and maybe what I was reading as condescension and a smug, superior attitude, was really genuine concern for the quality of  the work he approves. Plus, it’s been so many years since I’ve had a real editor, maybe I’m just not used to critique anymore.  Maybe I’ve gotten soft. And then I forwarded it to a few friends to get their point of view.

“Tell him to Fuck Off!” said one friend.

“Asshole.” said another.

So then I thought: Always trust my first impressions.  The guy is a jerk.

Here are some excerpts from what he said -with my own comments on his comments in purple.  I have edited out anything that would identify him or the site for which he works. (and if you want to read the article as it appears on my own site, click here.)

“…(You  might think those original ellipses are in place of a chatty, kind opening line.  You’d be wrong. No niceties.  Straight to the attack) the review isn’t properly titled(Nothing about how a review should be titled appears anywhere on the material I was given); the names of games, books, movies, etc. all need to be italicized throughout  (He’s got me there. It was in the directions. My bad.); the gaming section requires a star score and ESRB rating on all games. (True, I could have gleaned from the site that they require this. But they could have told me that, instead of telling me to use proper punctuation. Um. Duh.) .  …. we write “videogames,” not “video games;” (Really?  Because videogames isn’t a word.)  don’t write in all-caps, bold something if you want to emphasize it (again — I’m supposed to know this how?); and you shouldn’t include the cover image as that will show up with the Amazon ASIN. (Oh no! My vast pyschic powers must have failed me again! How could I not know that every PR person sends me cover art so that I WON”T USE IT. Oh, sorry, so that I won’t use it.)

Then, content-wise, what you’ve written is a perfectly good description of what you learned at the PR party you went to and the gathering you had to play the game, but isn’t really a review of the game itself.(Fine, point taken.  But if you would take a gander (his word. yuck) at those pesky little FTC regulations, you’d see that I have to disclose that I was invited to a party, fed, wined and dined. Details, details – like the law – I know!)  I wouldn’t include that really long paraphrasing (snide!) of what Tutera said – that has nothing to do with your playing the game….  Your ordering pizza (and the fact that it wasn’t Dominos) doesn’t tell anyone about the game either.( Again – disclosure – they gave me the Dominos gift card. Must disclose the gifts.  And I didn’t realize that snark only belongs in editorial comments to your writers, but not in the pieces themselves)  I don’t think it’s necessary to have a bunch of one to two word paragraphs with the opinions of the kids who played the game – say they enjoyed it or that they didn’t, the list doesn’t really add to the piece. (Personality counts.  This is a BLOG, buddy. Not The New York Times. If you weren’t some 22 year old hipster wannabe living in nowheresville (there go my psychic powers again!) You would know that to a parent, those responses do mean something. They mean everything. )  Outside of saying that there’s no gore and sometimes virtual dice for the board games included, you provide no specifics about anything that occurs within the title.  I understand that there are 13 games and 80 mini-games, but have no clue reading the review what any of them might be.  I don’t know what the graphics look like, I don’t know if everything is available up-front or if stuff has to be unlocked.   What are the characters?  Is there Mii support?  Can you play online?  How many people can play locally at a a time?  What’s the sound like?  Would it be at all fun to play by oneself?  What doesn’t work about the game? What made you cringe? (Point taken. I am so used to writing experiential pieces – rather than straight reviews, that I didn’t include enough detail. In the final post, which went up on my own site, I did include more specifics. That he has a point doesn’t, however, excuse the SNIDE factor – which simply oozes off the page. Need a tissue? Here you go.)

The editor, it turns out, has a masters in critique.  Evidently, he missed “How Not to be an Asshole 101.” Plus, if you have such particulars about style: write a style guide.  Every single publication or network I’ve ever worked for has one.

Finally – and this is the kicker – I’m writing for this site for FREE.  Yes, I am taking abuse from an editor for whom I write for NOTHING.

Whatever happened to civility? Whatever happened to “instead of using all caps for emphasis, we prefer that you bold the words,” instead of DON’T do this and YOU SHOULDN’T do that. (My blog. My rules.  I prefer all caps.  In internet speak, that’s yelling.)

So what’s your verdict? Asshole? Or just me being too sensitive.

And be careful how you answer — or I’ll all-cap my response!

The comment came from a guy named Ed.  And this was his opening line.

So you ended up being just a mother.

Just another mother, like a chimp, a cow, an elephant, a whale, just another mother, like an insect, or an octopus, or a worm. Just another sad mother.

The guy had me laughing already. What a jokester he must be.  And quite a laugh at family gatherings.

He went on to give his insightful commentary on how others must feel about my motherhood.

Your kids will not thank you, your husband will not like you, your own mother will pity you for making her own same mistake.

Just another mother.

Somehow, I don’t think he and his mom have the best relationship.  I’m very intuitive.  That’s how I know.

Next, the lovely Ed waxes poetic about “parental-brain-atrophy-syndrome” (ooh!  ten dollar words!  can my mom-brain take it?!) I won’t bore you with his entire oeuvre, just a summary.  I’ve biologically dumbed down my brain. My life is “dirt and feces.”   Blah blah blah. Again, just guessing here, but do you think that our friend Ed may have some slight socialization problems?

Motherhood, according to Eddie-poo, has doomed me to “a life of dandruff and diseases, vaccine and lice, high school and drool.” Poor Ed.  Sounds like his High School years were pretty tough.  What with the drooling and all. Kind of makes it hard to get a date. I can imagine the phone call:

“Hi, Susie?  This is Ed?  You know, from your science class?….What? Yeah, that’s me.  The one with the bib.”

When you’re in High School, you hate your mother,  and you have a drooling problem, chances are, you didn’t get a prom date.  Which may explain this next choice tidbit from my friend Ed’s comment.

You lost your dignity through your open legs, first inwards and then outwards, first-in-first-out, garbage-in-garbage-out, a boomerang of boredom.

Wow.  I don’t believe I have ever heard a man describe sex in quite that way. Especially the penis as garbage analogy. Most men I know think of the penis as the pinnacle of perfection, the private part of pleasure, the….well, perhaps I’m getting carried away. But the comment does make me wonder if Ed’s lack of a prom-date problem may have led to him missing out on sex all together.  Which would explain a lot.

After a bit more poetic rambling about my “loss” and how I’ve chosen “prison voluntarily” (guess his Mommy dearest kept him locked in his room most of the time. Thanks, Mom, for keeping away from the rest of us as long as you did!), he devolves into crazy Virgin Mary inexplicabilities.

“…Virgin Mary you are not, because Mary was not a Virgin, and you are not a Mary.“

Huh?

This last line really bummed me out.  For while he may be a psychopath, Ed is no dummy.  His psychotic ramblings up to this point were positively literary! Also, how crazy do you have to be to find MARITAL sex sinful?  Poor Ed. Destined to a life of unrequited love for an inflatable girl.

In fairness to Ed (though why I think he deserves fairness is beyond me), his comment ended up in Spam – which means he didn’t necessarily direct it at me – just at any blog having anything at all to do with motherhood.  Though I guess I’m not really helping Ed out here.  This means that he sent this psychotic crap out to a number of women.

Yikes.

And some of them might not have found him quite as amusing as I.

Ed winds down with this serial-killer-esque gem:

You were manipulated into just another life wasted on the heap of trash of a lost humanity dedicated to popular procreation and proletarian proliferation, to please the leaders of a domain of plebeians.

Hey!  Ed knows all about alliteration.  What a positively perfect position for a psychopath who preaches to parents!

Although this whole last passage makes me wonder if Ed even knows where babies come from.  “Popular Procreation?  Well, yeah. Of course it’s popular. It’s sex.  And here’s a newsflash for you, Ed: most people come from the  procreative act.  Except of course, you, Ed. (now now – we don’t want to upset to upset the crazy man!)

Ed ends with this little gem.

Good bye, sad mothers, good bye, old cows, with dried-out utters and distorted hips, good bye, and so alone you all will die.

Good bye to you, too, Ed.  Goodbye to what’s left of your sanity.  And hello crazy-hood!  You’re finally where you belong.

I just hope there aren’t any other people wherever that is.  Because, you know, they might all have…..MOTHERS!

]]> http://fromhiptohousewife.com/2010/08/18/a-psychopath-left-a-comment-on-my-blog/feed/ 10 nancyjrab smoking guy http://fromhiptohousewife.com/2010/08/16/seeing-a-broadway-show-hair-and-hygeine-tips-for-the-uninitiated/ http://fromhiptohousewife.com/2010/08/16/seeing-a-broadway-show-hair-and-hygeine-tips-for-the-uninitiated/#comments Mon, 16 Aug 2010 13:16:00 +0000 nancyjrab https://fromhiptohousewife.wordpress.com/2010/08/16/seeing-a-broadway-show-hair-and-hygeine-tips-for-the-uninitiated/ ]]> A few weeks ago my fellow blogger and  Blogging Angel, Rebecca Levey from Beccarama.com, took me to see A Little Night Music on Broadway.

Catherine Zeta Jones starred in the cast of this revival when it opened.  And after seeing her inexplicably Tony winning, bird-trapped-in-a-plastic-bag body language performance of Send in the Clowns on the Tony broadcast, I decided to wait until the new cast – headed by the inimitable Bernadette Peters – took over.

Boy am I glad I did.

The highlight of the show – perhaps of the Broadway season, is hearing Peter’s sing that signature song. Remember when you used to hear Send in the Clowns as a kid? I  was always thinking “Clowns? Huh? wha? Are they going to the circus?”

Ah. The innocence of youth.

Now, as a forty something it takes on new resonance.  And Peter’s does it justice, seeming to age on the stage, when she realizes her youthful love was too long ago to salvage. Watch her perform and witness a Broadway legend seal her place in history.

Luckily, Peters is sitting just about center stage when she sings the song, otherwise, I may not have seen her at all, since the woman in front of me clearly stopped at the store and bought a Bozo the Clown wig to wear to the theatre that night.

This was not just a head of hair in front of me. It was a triangulated, bright red, dense mass of curly hair hitherto unseen except in the nether regions of Ronald McDonald’s long lost sister.

Had the woman never seen a ponytail holder?

That was all she needed.  Just a little piece of elastic to stave off the frizzy wall that blocked my view of the entire left side of the stage. During the song “My Wife,” sung by the under-appreciated Alexander Hanson – (he is charming, handsome, and completely winning as Peters’ lifelong love interest) there is a fair amount of mugging by Peters, who is decidedly UNinterested in hearing about her former lover’s child bride.  But I didn’t see any of it.  I just heard the laughs.  Bozo blocked my view COMPLETELY. (And, just for the record, I am not exaggerating for comic effect; I saw ZERO that went on stage right (my left.))

Beccarama and I moved seats during intermission, only to find ourselves behind a woman who must have been about six feet tall, and had her hair piled high on top of her head.

This was passive aggressive theatre going at it’s peak.

If you’re just tall, it’s one thing.  No one likes to see Yao Ming scooting his way into the row directly in front of them, but it’s not like there’s a whole lot he can do about being circus-freak tall.  But if it’s just your ginormous hairdo, here’s a tip: TONE IT DOWN.

Tickets aren’t cheap (although, full disclosure: Beccarama  received the tickets from the show’s PR department.  I received my ticket because her sister got an ill-timed (for her) stomach bug.) You and your Hairdini aren’t the only ones who want to see what they paid for.  Plus, it’s just RUDE.  Don’t think for a minute that anyone thinks you’re oblivious:  we know just what you passive aggressive hair bullies are up to. And it’s got to stop.

While I’m at it, here are some other tips for you, if you’re planning on going to the theatre on your next trip to NY:

1. Brush your teeth. Sounds obvious, but you’d be amazed. Ditto deodorant.

2. This is not your living room.  Keep your comments to yourselves. Theatre is LIVE, people.  You may not comment on the goings on on stage to the person next to you the way you would were you watching, say, The Real Housewives of New Jersey. (who, by the way may not even be live themselves – just well drawn cartoons.)

3. If you must smoke, give yourself at least a few moments to air out before you take your seat.  Nothing spoils the illusion of being in the African Jungle, or the royal court like the stench of old cigarette smoke.

Of course if it’s a Mamet play, smoke away.

4. If you sleep, do not snore.  I know what you’re thinking : how would I know I‘m  snoring if I’m asleep?  I don’t care. Snoring is disrespectful to the actors and the people around you.  Tie a rubber band around your wrist, and if you feel yourself dozing off, give yourself a good hard snap.

5. If you MUST have a tuberculosis attack the second the lights go out, at least cover your mouth.  Why does the coughing begin as the curtain goes up? Passive aggressive anyone?

6. No canoodling.  Keep your head on top of your own shoulders, not snuggled up against your date’s.  You’ll be blocking someone’s view. And making them sick from the cuteness of it all.

7. Finally, a list of the most obvious ones – but clearly, people need to be reminded: no texting, IMing, phoning, browsing the web, filing your nails, flossing your teeth (I saw that once. Disgusting.), eating your sandwich or making out with your girlfriend because this is your seventh weekiversary.  Get a room.

Follow my rules for Hair and Hygiene when you go to the theatre, and you, too, can have a wonderful time.

Just don’t sit in front of me.