Monthly Archives: May 2011

The Real American Idols

Source: I saw this cartoon via Paul Rieckhoff today.

 

My 13-year-old is working on a debate project for school. His topic? Support for Death Penalty. (He has turned in a written article against death penalty last week. The teacher wants them to be able to argue from both sides for the topic they are each assigned to)

He was telling me all about the horrible cases he has read on the Internet, including some high profile cases of brutal assault and murder on young children. I cringed. My first instinct was to tell him to stop. Aren’t there some things in the world simply to horrifying to learn about? Isn’t it sometimes better if one simply does not know such evil existed and still exists?

I don’t remember how we went from death penalty, to Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (from women’s right to vote, to the right to bear arms, to the freedom of speech), but all of a sudden I found myself telling them about Westboro “Church” (Church is in quotation mark for obvious reasons…)  Naturally the boys were astounded to find such ridiculousness is being practiced by a bunch of grownups.  I went on to tell them about the Supreme Court ruling earlier this year that even Westboro “Church” is protected under the First Amendment.

“Can you just imagine these stupid people protesting at the funerals of soldiers who died just so these stupid people could have their stupid freedom of speech?” (Just substitute Stupid with Fucking)

“Can you imagine their parents who just lost their children having to see these stupid people at the funeral??!!”

I started tearing up.

 

I am trying to explain via my rambling above why I woke up this morning and decided to google “Memorial Day + Westboro” without even knowing that Westboro “Church” had planned to picket the memorial service in Joplin, MO because President Obama was going to be there. (According to tweets and the latest news I could find: POTUS was there; Westboro was not. Several unconfirmed reports said that Westboro crazies were in town but their presence at the memorial service was thwarted due to citizen actions…)

Then I saw the tweets from Paul Rieckhoff, founder of Iraq & Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) who is there right now at the Arlington National Cemetery:

 

I will just stop here because, wow, I don’t know what to say…

 

 

 

Footnote: Although I self-process to be a bleeding heart liberal, I often wonder what the official definition of that label is. Does it include an unexamined stance against war? Coming from a different country, different culture, different hemisphere, I am not completely anti-war. *gasp* War becomes inevitable when your country is being invaded and your people is being physically attacked on your physical territory. China went through the pillaging and ravaging by the Western world in the beginning of the 20th century; the whole people suffered humiliation under the greedy and power-hungry paws of the colonial forces.  (How do you think Hong Kong ended up being “leased” to the British Empire for 99 years?)  China fought against Japan in the brutal Sino-Japanese war two years before the so-called World War II started in Europe when Poland was invaded. And Taiwan? Taiwan was a Japanese colony for 50 years. When the KMT first retreated to Taiwan, in order to consolidate and ensure their power, the KMT government massacred the majority of the intellectual leaders.  And now? Taiwan is constantly living with the threat that China may decide to invade one day. (Or from their perspective, simply “take back what is rightfully part of China”…) All the male children are required to serve in the army for 12 months (it used to be 2 years).

What I am trying to explain by way of the above rambling is that I have an instinctual respect and admiration for people who serve(d) their countries because I have learned the horror from Chinese histories of when a country was not able to defend itself and the brutality of war itself.

Instinctual the same way I feel about teachers. (Confucius is really quite influential despite my grumblings against all the stereotypes and stupid Confucius quotes on Twitter)

National Jukebox

Did you hear about the National Jukebox project unveiled by the Library of Congress earlier this month?

When I heard it on NPR, I was so excited I almost crashed my car into the truck with a Calvin peeing sticker in front of me.

The National Jukebox is, according to NPR,

“the largest collection of historical recordings ever made publicly available online.”

The new website provides access to more than 10-thousand historical recordings for free on a streaming-only basis – no downloads. It covers the first quarter of the twentieth century and includes music, poetry, political speeches and other spoken word recordings. Right now, it only includes recordings made by the Victor Talking Machine Company, which Sony controls. The project is also a collaboration with the University of California, Santa Barbara – and its Encyclopedic Discography of Victor Records – which is helping to create a searchable database for every recording in the National Jukebox.

 

I am so happy that the big shots over at Sony decided to grant the access to and sharing of the recordings they own. This is a truly amazing treasure trove of historical records that one could spend a lot of time on, just by randomly browsing the catalogue.

Popular music (3585)
Ethnic music (1525)
Opera (1366)
Classical music (1223)
Ethnic characterizations (729)
Humorous songs (613)
Ragtime, jazz, and more (603)
Religious (486)
Comedies (222)
Monologues, dialogues, and recitations (205)
Descriptive specialties (133)
Blues (112)
Ethnic spoken word (94)
Traditional/Country (73)
Whistling (62)
Speeches (35)
Yodeling (32)
Spoken word (13)

 

Some of these categories intrigued me: “Ethnic spoke word”. “Ethnic characterizations”. Remember, these were from the first quarter of the 20th century and we all know what it was like back then. Therefore, the LOC posts this warning on every single page:

WARNING: Historical recordings may contain offensive language.

and the full disclaimer says:

These selections are presented as part of the record of the past. They are historical documents which reflect the attitudes, perspectives, and beliefs of different times. The Library of Congress does not endorse the views expressed in these recordings, which may contain content offensive to users.

Good times, eh?

 

My favorite feature has got to be the Jukebox Day by Day. You select a date, and out pop the available recordings made on the said date. Naturally, I tried my birthday.

 


By Paul Whiteman Orchestra recorded on July 11, 1924. I was truly not born then. (For once, I am being honest about my birth year…). And it was composed none other than George Gershwin.

 

How amazing that we now have free and open access to the following recording, with George Gershwin himself playing the piano?

By Paul Whiteman Concert Orchestra, recorded on June 10, 1924.

 

Technology rocks. Internet is awesome.

 

“I have a spare tire in my car.”

I don’t know what else to say. I will just quote extensively from this news report from KSN News 3 on May 25, 2011.

Sometime in May Representatives in Topeka, Kansas “were debating a bill that would ban insurance companies from offering abortion coverage in regular health plans. The bill, that was signed into law Wednesday, means women will have to buy a separate health policy to cover abortions.”

During the debate, Barbara Bollier, a Kansas lawmaker “pointed out that abortions would not be covered, under the new Kansas law, for cases of rape and incest.”

Kansas Pete DeGraaf responded by saying, “We need to plan ahead, don’t we, in life?”

Bollier then asked, “And so, women need to plan ahead for issues that they have no control over with pregnancy?”

Are you ready for DeGraaf’s response to this question?

“I have a spare tire in my car,” said DeGraaf. “I also have life insurance. I have a lot of things that I plan ahead for.”

 

“I have a spare tire in my car.”

 

I just have one question…

I went out for emergency shopping for Mr. Monk, my second grader. The school field trip next week requires in addition to everything else, RAIN FUCKING BOOTS. Rain boots. Seriously, where the fuck could I find rain boots on a random day?

So I ran to Target.

I also discovered that Targets carry clothes. (Ok, I have known this fact for a long time but they used to strike me as “For High School Girls Only”) Nice ones for $25 on average. So I spent almost an hour in the empty dressing room past 9 pm trying on spring and summer dresses. This is quite a big change from my usual ensemble of t-shirt and jeans. Now that I have to go to this new office with younger and hipper people, I have begun to wear jeans and blouses. And shoes with heels. I have figured this out: As a woman, you can wear almost anything and still look put-together as long as you are sporting a pair of envy-inducing shoes.

(With regarding the topic of the importance of possessing kickass heels, I will have to defer to the two sexy goddesses, Vapid Blonde and Wicked Shawn…)

Hey, a little bit of Retail Therapy, especially the French kind, would not hurt anybody, right?

Now I really just have one question…

 

 

 

Where the fuck did my waist go?

 

Guilt is the trip

Dear Blog,

I am very sorry for ignoring you for so long. I have not logged in for at least three days. I am so happy that you are still here.

Let’s see… It is 1:40 am right now. I am sad to say that I can at most spend 15 minutes with you. A quickie. And I will not even be able to cuddle afterwards.

My flight back home was delayed tonight so I did not arrive home until after 11 pm. I remembered this time to curb my urge to immediately pick up the house as soon as I stepped inside. I had a great conversation with The Husband about wine and wine glasses. Then I strayed: I thought, “Let me check work email for just one second.” You know how that turned out…

The Husband went to bed on his own. So I started feeling guilty. I did go upstairs to check on him and when he sounded really sleepy, I’ll be honest with you, I was relieved because I did not have to feel guilty about neglecting him. I mean, the man is tired anyway. I am actually being a nice wife for letting him sleep, right?

I rubbed his back for 3 seconds and he purred. That’s more affection than I have shown him most of the time. So, yeah, no guilt on that front.

I proceeded to pick up the bedroom and dragged the laundry downstairs because it would just be as easy as throwing stuff into the washer. It would be quick and easy so why not do it now rather than this weekend.

Turned out the amount of laundry will take about three loads…

I am now mentally calculating how much time it would take for me to clean up downstairs, put the clean dishes away (thanks to my trusted babysitter who comes every day after school), and do the dishes. I would like to get to bed at a reasonable hour, well, as reasonable as it could be considering it is now 1:50 am. I have to catch the 7:20 am train tomorrow to be in the office for a 9 am meeting with Da Boss.

So… why do I feel compelled to clean up the house NOW?

Why do I feel I would be a failure if I leave a messy house behind and go off to work tomorrow morning?

Why do  I feel so guilty about traveling for work, and now that I am home, about not being here to maintain the household?

 

I cannot form a cohesive thought right now so I am going to quote some passages from this article, The Bad Mother Complex that I came across around Mother’s Day. I have been thinking about it a lot, actually, ever since I became a mother.

The guilt had nothing to do with women’s actual ability to navigate competing obligations at work and at home; on the contrary, the study found that logistically, women were able to juggle the two spheres just as well as men. It’s how women felt about themselves while doing that juggling that set them apart.

Blair-Loy’s research centers around a concept she calls the work devotion schema — a kind of invisible, coercive mandate that permeates culture and requires us to see our work as a sacred calling, with meaning and value beyond just a paycheck… … it can trigger the uniquely moral emotion of guilt when family demands butt up against work allegiance.

The problem with the work devotion schema, Blair-Loy says, is this: While men and women both experience it, only women experience its mirror image at home. Blair-Loy calls it the family devotion schema; gender studies scholar Sharon Hays has termed it the ideology of intensive motherhood. Either way, it sets up a collision course of competing devotions for working women.

“Just like our culture has constructed work to have certain meanings and obligations, it has also constructed motherhood to have certain meanings and obligations,” says Blair-Loy. “Mothers who work full time are still trying to live up to this ideal of family devotion; they just have fewer hours to do it in…”    From The Bad Mother Complex

 

The guilt I feel as a working mother does not subside as the kids get older. In fact, it gets worse: now that they are old enough to notice the other mothers and how the other families live, esp. those presented on TV and in the movies.

Mr. Monk often demands requests that I make him food from scratch. It is not good enough if we make pancakes from the box of powder. It has to be made according to a recipe. I don’t blame him though. I suspect that to him it is a sign that I care as a mother, wherever he gets that idea of an ideal mother from (seriously I have no idea where he got it…)  Perhaps it also serves as a reassurance that we are like every other family, just a bit different, but not too much, now that the mother, i.e. me, also makes food in the kitchen as it should be. I am the embodiment of the family. If I am normal, we are normal.

Or something like that…

When I say, “No. I am sorry honey. We cannot do that this morning because of ____________.” the look he gives me is enough to send me on a guilt trip 8000 miles away and back.

It feels almost like an indictment.

So here I am. 2:20 am.

Time to put the load of laundry into the dryer and start another load.

 

ETA: 3:30 am. House picked. Dishes put away. Laundry #2 in progress. Kind of unpacked by emptying the luggage and throwing stuff either into a laundry basket or my work bag. As I was doing all this, I also remembered something else: Why is finding a babysitter my responsibility? Because I want to work so I am the one that should solve childcare issues? Whenever there is a scheduling conflict, I am the one being pointed at to figure out a way to hold my job. You know, all because I want to work, so of course I have to pay the price. I should stop now. I am just going to sound more and more bitter.

 

The Perfect Storm

When I was pregnant with my number two child, Mr. Monk, I suffered Deep Vein Thrombosis (aka blood clot) : my entire left leg was swollen before I realized it was not a muscle strain that’s been causing me excruciating pain, but rather something that could be life-threatening. My Obgyn immediately sent me to the emergency room – yes I drove myself (but I was not having a heart attack so I was not as crazy as this other gal I know…) and they put a filter into my aorta so no broken pieces of the Titanic-sized blood clot would get into my heart and stuff.

It only happened because the stars were lined up just so. A perfect storm so to speak.

Turned out I have a genetic disorder #$^%@%* that makes it easier for blood clot to form if my body has extremely low level of folic acid.

The amount in prenatal vitamins would have been more than adequate to prevent that.

By then I had been throwing up for about four months so no, I was not absorbing my prenatal vitamins properly, and I was severely undernourished, sustaining mostly on Gatorade. (Btw, I bet severe “morning sickness” would have been qualified for disability IF men could get pregnant…)

Your blood turns thicker when you are pregnant due to female hormones.

I was also extremely dehydrated which did not help with the blood thinning department.

 

Long story short: everything worked perfectly and BOOM! I had DVT, blah blah blah.

 

Why am I telling you this now? Because once again, the stars have aligned perfectly:

New job (my company was acquired)

+ New office

+ Two computers to deal with

+ Two systems

+ Two business processes

+ Two to-do lists

+ Longer commute (including my “I am on a fucking boat” moments, yes, I realized that)

+ Longer hours expected

+ Same kids

+ Same husband

= STRESS

STRESS = TEETH CLENCHING (which I did not realize I do all the time until now) = Massive and Rapid Bone Loss in My Teeth = Oral surgery to be expected

It is not like I have been having nightmares about losing all my teeth since I was young…

Head. Meet desk.

Hello, more stress. Nice to see you show up with more of your friends. Just come on in. Move right in. Mi case su casa.

 

So here is what I have… I found this blogger who has quite a few cartoons with cultural/social media commentary that make me:

OMG. ROTFL. DNPMPL. ITA. FML. IYKWIMAITYD.

 

Mr. Dave Walker actually encourages bloggers to embed his cartoons on their blogs. He has been doing this since 2005 and is probably one of the first people online to understand the concept of Sharing is loving...

So I am sharing this because Dear Internet, I love you, and I miss you, but I really need to prioritize the many things on my plate and focus especially on the ones that will help ensure I continue to have good dental insurance…

I am taking cover and waiting for the storm to be over.

 

 

cartoon from www.weblogcartoons.com

cartoon from www.weblogcartoons.com

cartoon from www.weblogcartoons.com

cartoon from www.weblogcartoons.com

 

Source: Cartoons by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

Damned if I do. Damned if I don’t.

Because of my racial/ethnic/cultural/educational make-up, I do not watch what I tell my children: I tend to over-explain everything and over-analyze everything for them. I also like to point out instances of racial/cultural prejudices and stereotypes disregarding whether they may be too young for such identity politics theory talks. Sometimes I feel sorry for them ’cause I have ruined quite a few “plain, good old fun” movies and shows for them.

A downside of such vigilance (or as the mainstream society likes to label it, Paranoia, or as Fox and Friends like to call it, Rampant political correctness that’s ruining this country’s cultural identity and core) on my part is that once in a while I would slip and my kids get to call me out on it.

Then they pile it on thick.

 

While we were discussing my 13 year old’s birthday party earlier this year, he mentioned that he really would like to go to the penny arcade before the sleepover at our house. Naturally, I tried to talk him out of it.

“Are you sure your friends will like the penny arcade?”

“Duh. It’s the arcade, mom. Of course they’ll like it!”

“How about the twins? They don’t seem to be the kind of kids that would be interested in going to the arcade.” Honestly, I said that based on my observations of how their parents care really about academic performances and how studious these two kids are.

“Mom, don’t be such a racist! Just because they are Indian, you just assume that they like to study all day long and they don’t like to do anything fun?!”

My bad.

 

On our way home from the blockbuster movie Thor, The Husband asked Mr. Monk, our 8-year-old, who he would like to be if he had to choose: “Thor or his brother Loki?”

“What kind of question is that? Why did you ask him that? Who would have chosen Loki? Of course everybody wants to be Thor!” I interjected because of the whole sibling rivalry thing and I did not want Mr. Monk, sensitive that he is, to dwell on the fact that the younger brother Loki is less than ideal in the movie. (Let me just put it this way so I won’t ruin the movie for you…)

Beside, from a pure aesthetic point of view…

 

From the backseat a voice immediately piped up, “Oh sure, everybody wants to be Thor. Everybody wants to be the blond-haired, blue-eyed guy.”

Mind you, The Husband is of Scandinavian descent and sports blond hair and blue eyes. (Alas, there ends the similarities between him and Chris Hemsworth… I just need to keep on telling myself that I do not like hairy men…)

“Oh yeah, the blond-haired blue-eyed people are the good guys. And the dark-haired guy nobody likes him.” My oldest continued. “Yeah, let’s just kill the brown-haired guy and the dark-haired people. This is a Hitler movie! A Hitler movie!”

 

(I have been sitting here for 15 minutes, trying to come up with a tidy ending for this post. I don’t know how to end this post. So I am just going to end it abruptly and go to bed considering how it is 4:43 am…)

A Love Song for Sandi

A dear dear friend recently had a medical scare. She is home safe now but I did not know about this until tonight.

Sandi over at Being Peachy and its wicked twin The Pits of Being Peachy had a heart attack and drove herself to the hospital. At this moment I am confused about the sequence of the events since I learned of her heart attack, her subsequent stay in the hospital, and her finally being able to go home all from posts by friends on her Facebook.

Her dear sweet husband, the one that she occasionally makes fun of her on her blogs, posted an update for her today. This post made me laugh, smile and cry at the same time:

Lloyd started by saying, “She is not dead,” on behalf of Sandi, and that’s 100% Sandi. And then Lloyd showed us the reason why someone so beautiful and caring and loving and passionate about life with a big heart and a great sense of humor such as Sandi fell in love with and chose him to spend the rest of her life with:

Thank you for caring about my wife, and my kids. They mean the world to me. Your thoughts, well wishes, tweets, texts, wall posts, and blogs kept her phone going off in my pocket all day long, and I saw her sense of humor coming through in your words.

 

I don’t remember exactly when and how Sandi and I found each other on the Interweb. But as soon as we did, there was an instant bond (forgive me for the cliche…). The first time we exchanged Facebook messages, they were long. Long with lots of run-on sentences like the kind of you wrote back and forth with your best buddies in high school. I fell in love (and trust) with her when she sent me the Friendship Disclaimer which she later turned into a video.

She is nuts. She is passionate. She goes all out for her friends and families. She is fierce. She is kind. She is loving. She is the forces of nature. She is a lady. Woa woa woa she’s a lady.

(Here is the part when you throw your underwears to me on stage. Thank you very much.)

 

She talked me off of a ledge once. Or maybe twice. She created a space on her blog called “You Write Here” for bloggers and non-bloggers who wish to get something off of their chests but for one reason or another they cannot do so openly or even on their own blogs. And most of us did not realize that she has been going through a lot. Much more heartbreaking, much more difficult shit that she has been shouldering than she let on. When I read that post, I was like, “WTF? Why did I bitch about my life in front of her? And why did she not tell me to STFU? Compared to what she has been going through, my life is indeed peachy…”

This event threw me off balance. I KNOW I have come to think of and care about most of you as real friends. But it was not until the shock and the relief that hit me that I realized, WOW. THIS is for realz. What we have going on here. THIS. IS. FOR. REAL.

Dear Sandi, to quote your best bud Anissa, ” NOT dead FTW.” Here is a song for you, “Your Song”, that I stole from Elton John. I don’t think he cares now that he has a baby and should NOT be getting any sleep. So it is YOUR song now. You are welcome.

 

And to continue our cheesy high school girl love affair, I am going to quote you some of the lyrics from YOUR SONG. Are you ready? Ok, here it goes:

And you can tell everybody this is your song
It may be quite simple but now that it’s done
I hope you don’t mind
I hope you don’t mind that I put down in words
How wonderful life is while you’re in the world

(And yes, baby, you keep the sun turned on, in addition to many other things…)

“I am swamped” sayth Prince Humperdinck. He said it, not me.

I know it is kind of lame to keep on writing posts about how I am totally swamped and apologizing for MIA. I am being a selfish blogger at this moment: all taking and no giving back. I am compelled to write this post because I want to use this quote:

“I’ve got my country’s five hundredth anniversary to plan, my wedding to arrange, my wife to murder, and Guilder to frame for it. I’m swamped.”

Prince Humperdinck, as quoted by William @ Poop and Boogies

 

It’s ok though because I have told William that Imma gonna steal this quote. Because it is way cooler than putting up this picture on my homepage.

 

And now I am going to encourage all of your who are also under the water, barely hanging on to your multitasking sanity to steal this quote and post it on your blog.

 

We have a gorgeous day here in Chicago. In the 80s. I took a water taxi this morning to the new office.

I was on a friggin’ boat!

This song really was what I was humming the whole time I was on the water taxi boat.

(Note to self: Do NOT show this to your kids. Too late I guess. Now let’s hope they heed your warning of not repeating the bad words…)

 

Ok. I will come 100% clean. I am posting (instead of writing a check to IRS for the fines associated with our 2009 filing) because I want to pimp this video below…

Mother’s Day. Schmother’s Day.

I am so glad Mother’s Day is finally coming to an end. In less than 30 minutes.

I was not going to write anything about Mother’s Day today. Apparently I have written several posts on how and why I hate Mother’s Day ever since I started blogging. The act of “Oh I don’t really care if you guys do anything for me on Mother’s Day” is painfully obvious to me yet maddeningly unrecognized by the others in this house.  The angst is palpable.

The good thing is: The Husband happened to be out of the country for a big meeting attended by hundreds of engineers (yes most of them men) every Mother’s Day for several years now. This actually helped me relax. If he is not here, well, he cannot be expected to bring me breakfast in bed, can he?

To be fair, he did surprise me with a package from FTD this year:

 

I was not expecting anything, and fortunately I recognized the FTD logo on the box and decided to open it right away.

I remember the last time I received a proper bouquet was in 1995 when we graduated and moved into an apartment together. Giddy with excitement at the sight of these flowers sitting on the kitchen table, I was content with half an hour of this this morning and considered today a success…

 

 

Really, life is what you make of it. Make no big deal out of today, then today is not a big deal.

I cooked. I cleaned. I did the dishes. I picked up the house. I did the laundry. I folded and put away clothes.

Just like any other day.

It worked out better this way really since I’ve been wondering “What’s the point if I have to clean on the Monday AFTER Mother’s Day?

 

Except that I am happy for The Husband that the following conversation did not happen today. Well, because he is not here so he could not have on Mother’s Day.

 

“Look at my arms! They are not that flabby, right?” I pinched my right forearm with my left hand and show it to The Husband. I continued, “I wonder why my arms always look so HUGE in pictures! They are actually kind of firm when I do this.” I then pinched my forearm some more.

“Maybe it is like the Kobe beef,” he said, after declining my invitation to pinch my forearm and see for himself.

“Huh?”

Pause. “Made with muscles and fat.”

5 seconds after I hit his face with a pillow…

“How about you treat me like Kobe Beef [sic]…”

“What?”

“Feed me beer and give me a massage!”

I did neither. It was not Father’s Day.

 

p.s. I do sincerely wish all the mothers, grandmothers, foster mothers, guardian angels out there a Happy Mother’s Day. I hope your day was full of relaxation and joy. More than that, I wish you a Monday After with NO increase in workload.