COMING SOON: shilohbucher.com! PhotoDude's dire warnings forced me to realize I couldn't rely on Blogger any more. So I'm looking into other, less free, options. The 'Dude's got some lovely rose photos, if you'd be wanting some Valentine's-appropriate wallpaper. (I was in the mood for something a little more girly than the supergun.) Plus, he's also served up yet another fascinating game of Underground Photoshop Tennis! Looks like he may have met his match, so to speak.
GRAPES OF WRATH: So you're a Palestinian suicide bomber who's just blown himself up in an Israeli playground (or shot up a bat mitzvah). You open your eyes, expecting to find your reward of 70 dark-eyed angels, untouched by man or djinn, and instead there is... an unopened box of golden raisins. This article from the Guardian suggests that the word hor, whose plural houris has long been taken to mean angel, may actually refer to white raisins. Which, don't get me wrong, are tasty and probably were really rare when the Koran was written, but talk about a let down. Who knew that my pantry was heaven on earth?
UPDATE: A clever reader has suggested this piece could have been titled "RAISIN HELL." Yep, that's better.
ON WIFEWORK: Mesdames Breen and Solent's discussion of Susan Maushart's complaints about wifework put me in mind of this Salon article about couples who split childcare 50-50. It's actually a review of a self-help book that teaches women how to force their spouses to shoulder exactly one half of the childrearing burden. Here are five strategies the book claims men employ to avoid helping out:
- Passive resistance: They perform tasks so grumpily that their spouses decide it isn't worth it, or they simply ignore their wives' requests altogether. "In one ear and out the other," one man tells Deutsch.
- Incompetence: These men burn dinner, forget to pick up children and generally create more problems than they solve.
- Praise: "It would be a struggle for me to do the laundry. I don't think I do it as well as Roz. I think she is better with sort of the peasant stuff of life," said one man.
- Different standards: These men conveniently don't care about details such as what the kids eat, and thus figure they can ignore them.
- Denial: By comparing their domestic contributions to those of their fathers, who did almost nothing at home and whose wives did not have jobs, these men make themselves look good. They also attribute their partners' greater domestic loads to personality differences. Says one, whose wife complains that he doesn't make dinner: "Cooking relaxes her. She likes to do it and she likes to keep busy."
When I read this article a year before meeting Mr. Bucher, I got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. It wasn't so much the prospect of battling with a potential spouse over the care of a potential child that was so foreboding. I just realized that I, myself, didn't want to do one half of the Kinder-wrangling. Good luck finding a man who'd be eager to do seven eighths.
Fast-forward to year-before-last when I became Mrs. Bucher. One of Susan Maushart's many complaints is that when women get married the amount of housework they do skyrockets. This did in fact happen to me, merely because I had been doing so little when I lived by myself. Mr. Bucher rescued me from my own lonely squalor and continues to do more of the cleaning than I. He also cooks slightly more and completes a litterbox sweep twice daily. By mutual consent, I do all the laundry and the dreaded shopping. I also clean up after myself, which is an enduring struggle that remains a testament to the power and resilience of the human spirit. Still, despite my pretty good efforts, sometimes I think I fail to meet my spouse's rather high standards of neatness, just as Ms. Maushart's two former husbands failed to meet hers. I would hope, though, that he doesn't fancy that he would be better off without me. I doubt that he does-- he just brought me some hot tea!
I know I am lucky in my choice of mates and Mr. Bucher was a clearly splendid find, but surely our situation is not unique. Plenty of heterosexual men tend towards nitpicking neatness. Since human beings tend to be attracted to people who differ from them, it's more than likely many of these neat-niks have been ensnared by the carefree charms of a sloe-eyed sloven. But how many of these men do you think sit around with their friends and complain about their wives? I agree with Moira, many women complain about their husbands far too much. It's like a sport with some of them. Both men and women need to take responsibility for what happens in their own relationships. It's a sad fact, but no one likes a martyr but God.
LYNXGATE: There was an report in the Washington Times last month alleging that state and federal wildlife biologists had planted captive lynx hair in two national forests in order to make it appear that they were populated by an endangered species. They were accused of using false evidence to try to prevent further development. Now the journal Nature (registration required) has an article disputing that the biologists actually planted the lynx hairs in the forest. The journal claims that the scientists merely mailed in the captive lynx hair in order to see if the government-contracted lab would be able to correctly id its DNA. If that's true, it would certainly better explain why none of the researchers have been punished so far.
INCREASING ICEBERG UPDATE: As I noted last month, large icebergs are trapping baby penguins in Antarctica. Now Tech Central Station reports on an article in the science journal, Nature (registration required), which confirms that most of Antarctica is getting colder.
I'm sure this news won't put a dent in anyone's global warming fantasies. Indeed, someone right now is already arguing that the colder temperatures at the South Pole are no doubt caused by global warming. That is the problem with the mainstream thinking on climate change these days. It has become completely unfalsifiable, like most other religions.
A LITTLE LEFTY MEDIA BIAS from Houston Chronicle reporter R.G. Ratcliffe, recorded on the 2000 campaign trail in a new documentary:
"A bologna sandwich is essentially white bread, which would be any Republican candidate for president. The primary ingredient would be bologna, which would be the meat of the message. When you hear `Read my lips: no new taxes,' it's baloney," he said."The next element is cheesy things that go on TV. In this case, it is Swiss cheese, so there are holes in their arguments, which is kind of where their opponents come through.
And that, in essence, is your Republican presidential campaign: a white-bread candidate with a baloney message and cheesy advertising," he joked.
And anyone wonders why Bernard Goldberg's book is selling so well?
THE PRETZEL DEBACLE and resulting neurally mediated vasovagal syncope has me worried. What if the President had really hurt himself? The problem is that he is too darn healthy. This abnormally low heart rate that makes him prone to fainting spells is caused by all that running in the Texas heat. Eating pretzels, a snack food with basically no fat at all, can't help either. It's obvious Bush should employ moderation in his exercise and start eating more fatty, but easy to chew munchies. Maybe he could wash it down with a milk shake or two. For the good of the nation.
I DID MY CIVIC DUTY, but was not selected as a juror. Turns out my impanelling group was the last of the day and by afternoon they were only handing out on-call asignments. They asked for volunteers, I stood in line, but before I could get to the front they had filled their quota. Still, it was quite an interesting experience. There were about 550 of us sitting in folding chairs in a very large room. We all rose when the judge came in, and then rose again to be sworn in. I was surprised at how quiet and polite everyone was.
District Judge Darlene Byrne gave some very stirring remarks about the importance of the jury system. She thanked us for our sacrifice of the afternoon and reminded us of the sacrifices that others had made recently to preserve, among other things, this freedom to be tried by your peers. We take the Seventh Amendment for granted here in America, to the point that it is unthinkable that it would ever be taken away. It takes a lot of effort to pass an ammendment, after all. But the number of jury trials may soon be cut by two-thirds in Britain, according to a scary report in the New Statesman. Apparently, what the Magna Carta gave, Labour statists can take away. Isn't that outrageous?
EUREKA! I've had a great success today getting my Apple Titanium laptop to Hotsync with my Palm through the infrared beaming. After installing the OS X Palm desktop software, I put them back to back and they were able to talk to one another. Amazing. I didn't think it was possible to love that laptop any more than I already do, but every so often it surprises me.
Wish I could blog more right now but I'm off to answer my summons to jury duty. Let's see if they want me...
I'LL NOT LABEL THIS ONE: The excellent Moira Breen has taken issue with my label for the bit about British converts to Islam: "JOHNNY WALKER'S BRITISH COUNTERPARTS" I had actually originally called it "Jemima Khan Syndrome," but then Blogger ate it and I had to retype it, and I had a second thought about naming a whole syndrome after Mrs. Khan, who I had never heard of before reading the article.
Moira's definitely correct that I wasn't serious about the label. I've been following the same format as InstaPundit and Andrew Sullivan with the headline type blurbs at the beginning of each bit. Sometimes they are the hardest part of the bit to write, which has been annoying because I didn't think that anyone really paid attention to them. Now I know at least one clever person does. Drat!
TIME TO COME OUT OF THE CLOSET: I've been in there most of this weekend, trying to keep New Year's Resolution #4: Don't be such a damn slattern. Also spent considerable time practicing maneuvers at Wal-Mart and Target with the Retail Shopping Brigade. Got to keep America rolling, you know. Hence the lack of blogging in the last 81 or so hours. Sorry about that, but hopefully greater organization of surroundings will have positive effects on organization of mind. This is my theory, as yet untried, of better blogging through clean closets.
While at the checkout lane in Wal-Mart, I couldn't resist taking a look at the tabloids. As usual they are chock full of fresh warm schadenfreude. One claimed most dubiously that Monica Lewinsky had "hit rock bottom" recently. I think the sub-headline was "Snubbed. Jeered. Fat. Lonely." That does sound sad, but can her life really be worse now than when she was hunted by the press and a regular topic of Saturday Night Live? Or when she was waiting for Clinton's 2am phone calls and confiding all into Linda Tripp's tape recorder? I doubt it.
There was one that longed to be thrown on top of my cart filled with wooden coat hangers and closet shelving thingies, though, and I answered its siren call. This week the headline of The National Examiner reads: "MARTHA STEWART FRAUD! SHE'S FALLING APART! -sources say, I CAN'T DO IT ALL! -she tells insider." Inside we find there was just some monkey business with her IPO. That's why she's being charged with fraud. It's not because someone has finally realized that she doesn't do all that crap herself. Also, she's gained weight and has no boyfriend. Perhaps she should give Monica a call.