Toe Cleavage!!!

I used to work for a department of BYU that printed annual academic calendars and took them around to other campus offices. One year, as I recapped here, (seriously, go read it, I had a super fun workplace) there was this big kerfuffle about the group of smiling multicultural people featured on the calendar. After we'd already delivered them, someone (I do not know who, but they must have had power) complained about the immodestly dressed models. Next thing we knew, the calendars had been Photoshopped, reprinted, and then we had to go redeliver them, throw away the originals, and not actually tell people why they were getting a new calendar. I think we were told to say that one of the dates was wrong or something.

The changes? A little girl had sleeves added to her sundress and the skirt lengthened. The white tank top peeking out beneath a woman's v-necked necked shirt was colored to match her shirt lest people think this woman was running around flashing garments. The same woman was wearing open-toed sandals and her toes were colored in because her toe cleavage was offensive.

Nuts, right? Except I think some of those Overzealous Immodesty Police may have ended up over at the Ensign magazine. Take a look at what Heather over at Doves & Serpents just noticed when she compared this Carl Heinrich Bloch painting as printed in the Ensign to its original. (I'll wait while you read her description of the changes.) They didn't just remove the wings, they also made the angels robes more modest (and also: ugly).

Does anybody else think that maybe we are going a little bit nuts about the modesty, here? Why insult an artist by choosing to use his work but then removing everything that does not reflect our own current religious or cultural standards? If that's the new rule for art, I'm sure there are plenty of crappy painters out there who would be willing to paint religious scenes and be sure to put Shade shirts and close-toed shoes on everyone and make sure all the guys are clean-shaven with really short hair.

Also. Sorry to be crass, here, but do we really think some teenage boy is going to take the Ensign into the bathroom with him and then blame the church for putting angel porn right in front of him like that? Really?

I suddenly feel like I'm in the middle of a Weekend Update: Really?!? segment with Seth Meyers. (Note: Does anybody else have a total crush on Seth or is it just me? It should be allowed, look at how modestly dressed he is here. Assuming, of course, that he's wearing pants.)

Because sometimes you just want to write a judgy letter

English strawberries I ate at Chatsworth back when I used to go there

Dear Lady Who Was Also Choosing Strawberries at Sunflower Farmers Market Yesterday,

I'm really glad you love Sunflower. I do too.

I love that it is the closest thing we have to a Trader Joe's. I love how inexpensive and nice the produce is, and how once they get me in the door with the dirt-cheap produce I then buy things like coconut milk and bottled curries and nitrate-free lunch meat and yogurt sweetened with fruit juice.

I love grabbing a chocolate croissant when I first walk in so that I can eat it while I shop and sprinkle buttery croissant flakes all over my shirt. (They say you shouldn't shop for groceries while hungry. I am just following sound principles, here.)

I love the boxes of sushi they have in the deli department and how they actually taste like fresh, real sushi instead of tiny little rubber tires. (Am looking at you, here, Costco. But no worries, I'll never quit you. Call me.)

I love all the huge bulk bins. I love that there are about 12 different kinds of sugar in those bins. I love the great deals I can get on spices and olive oil without having to buy massive amounts of either.

I love that they have a machine where you can make your own nut butters. I have not done this yet, but I heartily approve of the idea.

I love the beautiful bottles that they put their fizzy lemonades in, but I have to stop myself from buying them because I know I will never want to throw the bottles away but I will also never do anything with them and it will lead to hundreds of exchanges where an exasperated GH wants to throw away all the useless kitchen clutter and I threaten him with his life should he touch my precious empty lemonade bottle with the label half ripped off.

I like the wacky music selection they play. It turns out that the Dark Lord is a big fan of Huey Lewis and will just bop all over in his seat when he comes on over the speaker system. This entertains us both.

I generally enjoy the people who work there and the people who shop there. They tend to be a friendly bunch, like the fellow customer who gave me instructions on how to freeze the cartons of blackberries that were on sale for practically nothing. (Note: I did not freeze them. I just ate them all--mostly in cobblers. But I appreciated her advice.)

So it was kind of a surprise to look over and see you nonchalantly dumping out entire clamshells of strawberries so that you could pick through them and assemble your own box of perfect Super Strawberries. I found this kind of weird and rude. What are we, six? Not only were you pawing through all the strawberries, but you were likely bruising them while you sloshed them and dumped them around, which then kind of ruins it for the rest of us. And gives us your germs.

I now wonder if maybe you do that all the time, for all the different fruits. It's kind of a gross thought.

Best wishes,

The Girl Who Was Staring at You with Her Mouth Open


So, friends. What's the weirdest thing you ever saw someone doing at the grocery store? Or, perhaps, what was the weirdest thing YOU'VE ever done?

Let's get political, political . . .

source

If any Utah friends are feeling particularly livid right now about the health care bill that just passed, welcome to my club!

For those who don't know what it is, House Bill 363 would allow schools to drop their sex ed programs. Schools that choose to keep sexual education on the curriculum would be restricted to teaching "abstinence only." No discussion of contraception, no discussion about the idea of sex outside of marriage, no acknowledgment of homosexuality. It could even be taken so far that if kids did approach an educator with questions about how to prevent STDs or pregnancy, the educator would not be allowed to give them that information (except to say, "Just don't have sex until you are married.").

It seems like the logic here goes something like this: "Parents are the best people to teach their children about their bodies and about sex. So the best thing to do here is make sure that nobody else is allowed to. Of course, there are all those teenagers whose parents are too embarrassed/unaware/uninterested to talk about it. That's too bad for those kids, but at least when they make poor decisions as a result of being completely ignorant and/or misinformed and wind up pregnant or diseased, that will just go to show how important parents are."

Way to turn teenagers (and their babies) into collateral damage, jerks.

The current program is an "opt-in" one--kids have to have parental consent to participate. And the fact that over 90% of Utah parents choose to opt-in should say something. Here are the majority of parents feeling that there is value in allowing the schools to participate in arming their children with accurate and appropriate information, and a few lawmakers are going to be all, "Well, forget what those parents think. I'm talking about this other kind of parent that I have in mind, and they don't want anyone to know anything. So there."

If you are so inclined, there is still time to sign this petition to the governor, encouraging him to veto the bill. Or just contact his office directly even though he already kind of said that he doesn't care what the citizens of Utah think.

Other articles:

Deseret News: Abstinence-only sex education bill passes Utah Legislature

Salt Lake Tribune Opinion Piece

St George News: Ignorance of sex is best remedy

Um, is there some rebranding going on here?

I was browsing the always-amusing Not Always Right and sending a prayer of thanks heavenwards for the reduced hours I now spend assisting the general public, and a side ad caught my eye. Then it furrowed my eyebrows and squinted my eyes and made my mouth go, "What the???"



It's an ad for Philosophy, which makes really nice (read: expensive) skincare products. Which . . . you would then give to your 4-year-old daughter just before the swimsuit competition at a Future Sex Workers of America toddler pageant?

I am so confused. I really hope that ad is fake spam. Only oh my gosh it ISN'T, they have it up on their website too!

I am so confused right now. Hold me.

Best thing I've read all week

My new guilty pleasure is Not Always Right, where I get to read about customer service interactions that are (sometimes) worse than the ones I get to be a part of. It also occasionally makes me think that the aliens probably should just head on over and enslave us all, because holy cow we are a stupid race. This one the other day was priceless.

(A woman came up to my counter in the clothing store I work in. She has a very distressed look on her face.)

Me: “How can I help you this morning?”

Customer: “What is this red sticker on the tag of this dress?”

Me: “That is a clearance sticker. That dress is 40% off.”

Customer: “But I was here yesterday and it wasn’t on clearance! I’ve
been eying that dress for weeks!”

Me: “Well, today is your lucky day - it went on clearance this morning.”

Customer: “I can’t buy it on clearance. Can you take that red sticker off the tag?"

Me: “Are you going to buy this dress?”

Customer: “I’m going to buy it once you take off that red tag. I don’t want to pay the clearance price.”

Me: “Even if I remove the sticker the register will still ring it up at clearance price.”

Customer: “Do I look like I’m the type to buy a dress on clearance?”
*holds the dress up dramatically*

Me: “Are you planning on buying this dress?”

Customer: “Are you planning on taking off that red sticker?”

Me: “Not until you pay for it.”

Customer: “You don’t understand my world.”

Am now going to start ending conversations with a deep sigh and a, "You don't understand my world." What made this extra awesome is that it happened in the world of Utah. Any chance the customer was TAMN?

I want pepper-spray as a baby shower gift now

Attended my sister's hard-core cooking group last night at the lovely Jeri's house (she of the redesigning my blog fame). Got to gasp in awe at the food storage bunker that came with the house, with its multitude of shelving. "Old people lived here before us," she said by way of explanation.

The theme was aphrodesiac foods, and we've decided that men had to have made the list of supposed aphrodesiacs, because only a man could imagine that looking at phallic-shaped foods would be a big turn-on for women. (You know, cuz we're all about those.) I could, however, absolutely imagine a guy seeing a cake shaped like boobs and having that work for them. Maybe I'm wrong. But I digress. The food was amazing, even if it did not result in us having one of those Victoria Secret pillow-fights that the commercials think we have.

Because most of the group consisted of women with small children, the conversation at one point turned to Insane Things Those Small Children Have Done. Have now resolved never to have little boys, because it turns out that they do things like shake out entire cartons of orange juice on the living room floor, and ruin people's vintage furniture, and dump out gallons of chocolate milk on living room carpets, and pee under couches, which, how is that even possible. Or maybe I should go ahead and have boys, but remove everything of beauty or value from my home first. And get disposable couches. Maybe the inflatable kind. And install carpet made of paper towels.

And then the conversation turned to People Who Walk up to One in Public and Criticize One's Parenting. Now, I'm sure there are lots of mommies who feel that I fall into that category. I don't, though. When I draw a parent's attention to something going on with their child it is either because a) Mom is busy using the public library computer and has seemingly forgotten that she owns a child and so said child is placing his body or life in danger, or b) the child is ruining my life, or the lives of others. Those are the only times. Also most of those times occur in the library where I'm just doing my dang job, people.

But Jeri talked about how she finally resorted to putting her likes-to-dart-into-traffic daughter into a kiddie harness so that she could keep her alive. And people would walk up and say things to her all the time about what a bad parent she is for doing such a thing. Some guy walked up and was all, "Do you really think it's appropriate to leash your daughter like some kind of animal?" And bless her, she replied, "No, what I think would be really appropriate is if I let her run into traffic and get killed." She should have kicked him in the face while she was at it, but she was trying to wrangle two kids at the time, including the kamikaze one. We thought another good idea would have been to say, "Do you really think it's appropriate to walk up to a complete stranger and offer unsolicited parenting advice about children you don't know at all?" (And then kick him in the face.) Or maybe, "Actually, this harness is just a screening device to see who the complete suckwads are. Congratulations!"

I came home and told GH that if he ever gets a call that I've been arrested, it'll be because I was out with our children and somebody talked smack to me. And then I stabbed them.

The Mormon Wedding Post

I said it was coming! As one who has attended many, many weddings, I would like to offer some advice on how to make your wedding a classy affair that will be remembered fondly, reverently even, by all whose lives it touched. (Note: if you feel that I may be disparaging something you did at your wedding, I'm not. I'm thinking of somebody else's wedding, and you don't even know that person.)

Here we go.

First of all, you must have a reception. Do not even consider doing otherwise. Some may try to tell you that they didn't have one and that it cut out a lot of stress and money and planning and everyone enjoyed the day a lot better and maybe they were able to throw a very nice dinner or luncheon for their family and closest friends instead of serving Sprite and mixed nuts to a blur of 500 people, blah blah blah. Don't listen to them. They are the same kind of people who don't show off their rings in their engagement photos. Clearly they cannot be trusted. Plus, everyone knows you only get presents if you throw a reception.

Anxious about your wedding budget? Remember the key equation here: Family + friends + friends of friends = free labor. You CAN have it all and make your $5K budget produce the $20K look that your richie friends have. All it will take is a bit of elbow grease from other people who are not you. And hey, if you need pictures of your mom you can always send the photographer(s) out to the kitchen or loading dock. Snag guests to help clean up afterward into the wee hours. They won't mind, you did just feed them cake.

Another tip: Call up people you know who work in the wedding biz (like florists, caterers, photographers, graphic designers) and give them the opportunity to perform their services for you for FREE. This way, you are giving them the chance to perform service, which is a service on your part. Don't cheapen it (and deny them blessings) by mentioning money. If they do agree to be blessed, make sure you let them know afterward if they don't meet your expectations. You're just trying to help them be better.

Engagement photos: Show that ring, ladies. If you'll be paying it off for the next 6 years then everyone had dang well better get a look! Also? Piggybacks. I think an engagement photo looks nothing without one party straddling the other. And really, isn't that what an engagement is all about?

If you do not put your registry information in the announcement itself, you will not get any presents. Also you know it's correct etiquette because that's where the people at Wal-Mart told you it goes.

Best wedding slideshow video song choice ever: Wonderland by John Mayer. Cannot go wrong. Also, put as many sleeveless photos of yourself in there as you possibly can, so those tops have one last shot at glory before you give them to your little sister.

Bridesmaids: you must have them. No one is going to take on the huge responsibility of watching the sign-in table unless they get to be a bridesmaid. Also be sure to pick outfits that they will never, ever wear again, because you want your friends to remember YOUR DAY ONLY when they see them hanging in the closet. Or when they take them to their therapists' office.

And speaking of, you know how the one tragedy about getting married in the temple is that you're not supposed to wear the sleeveless/strapless wedding dress you've been slavering over in bridal magazines ever since you were 9 years old? Yeah well, the next best thing = mandated strapless dresses for your LDS bridesmaids! They will thank you because secretly they are tired of sleeves also. And remember, you can't show your shoulders but you can show your boobs! Wedding day cleavage is awesome, and the tuck-and-pin is your friend here, ladies. Just blank out whatever they tell you in the temple and you'll be good.

If you are going to do something unique and different (shoes, dress, accessories, decorations), make sure it's the unique thing that everyone else is doing that year. It's safest that way, and you still get points for individuality.

To keep your breath fresh for all the hugging and greetings, have gum in your mouth all day long, including during the ceremony. Hey, you're just being considerate.

After the temple ceremony, hold a ring ceremony. The secret good thing about this is that you can say it's for the family members who didn't get to go inside the temple, but really it's your chance to hold the barefoot-on-the-beach-at-sunset-with-tiki-torches-lining-the aisle wedding you've always really wanted. (Aaaaaand Win-WIN.)

So that you can get the honeymoon started ASAP (like if there was no time in the car on the way over), book your reception for early in the evening--say 5 or 6pm. Don't serve dinner, though, because dinner is pricey. People who show up at 5pm expecting something substantial are just Out to Bleed You Dry and probably shouldn't have been invited in the first place. Also be sure the caterers won't charge you for additional slices in case those piggies go back for more.

The receiving line is pretty much the best thing ever, and the way you know you are popular and loved is if the line stretches outside the building for hours. Best of all is if some guests never even make it inside. To facilitate this, cram your side of the line with absolutely everyone you can think of--parents, brothers, sisters, family pets, you name it. Everyone loves a good line. They'll get to meet loads of people and have great conversations with all of them!

If your beloved brother or sister is on a mission or at a home for unwed mothers or is maybe just going through a gawky phase, cardboard cutouts with their faces superimposed are awesome stand-ins. The life-sized George W. Bush cutouts work well not only because he is already in a suit but also because his image will bring a special spirit. You can even put the cutouts in the receiving line when you need to spell some whiner who passes out after 3 hours. Or just keep them there from the get-go.

You must have a garter toss. Must, must, must. Extra points if the groom goes for it with his teeth. Always classy, never @$$y. ALSO you must demand that all the single women get up to fight over your bouquet. Make sure to maybe point at a few of the women who especially could use it, like the over-30s or recently divorced, because that will make them feel special.

Have a chocolate fountain. Not only will the children in the crowd use the chocolate for artistic purposes, mostly for improving their own clothing and the clothing of those around them, but it's almost mesmerizing to watch the cascading streaks of oil they use to keep the chocolate smooth. Shiny . . .

Best timesaver ever: Leave generic thank-you notes for people to pick up on the way out. With thank-yous out of the way, that's hours you can dedicate to canoodling and watching your wedding video again some more.

What have I forgotten?

It's not just for the Internet anymore

The other day at work I noticed the newest offering in the Pride & Prejudice Retelling genre. This one is called Impulse & Initiative and I turned it over to read the back cover.



Ahem.

What if . . .
Instead of disappearing from Elizabeth Bennet's life after she refused his offer of marriage, Mr. Darcy had stayed and tried to change her mind?

What if . . .
Lizzy, as she gets to know Darcy, finds him undeniably attractive and her impulses win out over her sense of propriety?

What if . . .
Madly in love and mutually on fire, their passion anticipates their wedding?

Yeah.

Say, I've got a "what if" for you. What if . . . P&P already has one set of skanky whores, and their names are Lydia and Wickham. Seriously people, are the shades of Pemberley to be thus polluted?

This story, to me, sounds like someone is just waving a book and shouting, "Hey, it's Lizzy/Darcy sex and it is HOT! Come and get it!"

And really, if that's all you're after, it's called fan fiction and can be found on the Internet at no cost (well, unless you count the cost to your self-respect and dignity as a human). I'll bet you that's how this book got started.

So y'all do that here too, huh?

Remember that one time I had to write a letter to the parents of L****? Well. I'm getting the mailing list together for Salt Lake County.

GH and I decided to class it up on Saturday by attending a high-school production of the Disney's Beauty and the Beast. We, for the most part, both really like going to high-school plays. They're cheap, they're usually pretty good, and you get to support a local high school drama program, thereby ensuring that another generation of choir/drama geeks will go forth with their penchant for gathering around pianos to sing at parties.

I know, of course, that when I go to a high-school play my expectations have to be modified. I expect that it won't be a professional production, that there may be some bad acting, that the audience will be extra vocal in its support of friends/family in the cast. But there's also a fun kind of energy about all of that, I think.

There were a few things I didn't expect, though. I did NOT expect that the couple behind us would carry on a non-stop dialog with their 5-year-old son.

"Look Timmy, it's the woods!"
"Oh, see how the scenery is changing?"
"Oh, look, he's walking up the stairs now!"
"Look, it's Belle!"
"See, he just went through a door!"

Um, is the kid blind? Because if he is then bringing him to a play is actually kind of mean, I think. Both to him and to us. We soon learned that the kid wasn't blind. Encouraged by his parents' style of narration, he began and maintained a steady stream of questions throughout the entire first act.

"But where did the Beast go? Where did the Beast go Dad?"
"Is he in the woods? Is he in the woods now?"
"Are they going to sing a song?"
"Is the Beast mad?"
"Is this the castle now?"
"Why are they singing?"
"Is he a candle?"

Now, I get the part where if you're a little kid and you're seeing a play for the first time, these will be things that occur to you--how CAN you tell if the scenery has changed, and where are people going when the leave the stage, and why is it that the characters look different from the way they are in the movie? All valid questions. Except the best time to talk about these things is really not during the play when everyone else is trying to watch it too. Mom made no attempt to shush him, or to tell him to wait and she would answer his questions when it's time to talk again.

I turned around eventually and looked pointedly at her. The woman on my right turned around and gave them a "shhh." The woman on GH's left turned and asked them to please be quiet.

Nothing. It never, never, never let up. Between that and the guy on the left of us who kept bringing out his cell phone to get a text update about the UofU/BYU game, I was losing my mind.

And I don't want to hear anyone bringing out the, "Hey, what's the big deal, it's only a high-school play and you only paid $7.50" excuse. Because that doesn't fly. Those students and their teachers worked hard putting that play together, and they have friends and family members in the audience who came to see and hear them, not some kid who is not yet ready to attend plays or the electric-blue glare of 8 million cell phones.

On the third offense I turned to the cell phone guy and mouthed that the light from his cell phone was quite distracting and could he please turn it off (it's kind of hard to switch out of librarian patrol mode when I'm off the clock, I'm finding). GH tried desperately to prevent me from doing this. He wanted to give the guy a pass for being at a play with his daughter instead of being at the game. Which, yes, is valid, but that doesn't mean he gets to blind me. I mean, maybe there were times during the play when I wanted to shriek like a monkey. Did you ever think about that? But I didn't. Plus, because there were so many people using cell phones it interfered with the wireless microphone system. So the sound at several points was quite bad. Can't believe they didn't think to make an announcement about that before the play started.

So by the time intermission hit, we were both done. We had planned to just move to some open seats during the break to get away from the kid and his parents, but the more we talked about it we realized that neither of us were that enthralled with the play. The girl playing Belle was great, but she was kind of the only great thing. You couldn't hear anyone who didn't have wireless mikes on, and there weren't enough mikes to pick up the sound from the big chorus numbers. So we came, we donated to the program, my brain exploded out my ears, and then we went home.

Wanna hear something that does not so much make my day

I mean, unless I want my day to be full of reminders about how we seem to be sinking as a people.

The other day I walk out from the staff workroom after storytime to head back and take my seat at the Information Desk. As I approach I realize that there is a toddler at the desk tugging at and playing with the book scanner next to my computer, which is a $400 piece of equipment. I rush over and am like, "Heeeeeeey little guy, let's find your mom." Because this did happen at my old place. Moms would take their eyes off the kid for approximately .0043 seconds and the next thing you know the kid is in my vacant chair, scanning books and blogging and answering reference questions. Then mom rushes over to fetch said child and we share a chuckle about how darn speedy these tykes are.

This time, when I looked around for mom, I saw her standing there there next to my desk, holding an infant. In response to The Eyebrow she looked at her son and started saying words like, "Okay, now, you can't be back there. . . . . I need you to come out from there . . . . Sweetheart, I need you to come with mommy." All while not making a move towards him.

Which, yeah. We don't play that.

So even though I try to be careful about the whole "touching other people's kids" thing I leaned down, grabbed him nicely under the armpits, hauled him up and dropped him next to her, and then turned my back on the both of them to keep from giving the lady more Eyebrow.

I mean really. Is it easier to just grab your kid or to pay for broken electronics? Was she afraid that she was going to damage his self-esteem or somehow shame him socially if she simply took him by the hand and led him away? I have no idea. My only guess is that she was somehow strung out on allergy medication and was therefore in some sort of fog state.

Yo quiero?

The other night I accidentally watched part of ABC's evening news. I know, I'm not really sure how that happened either. I prefer to get my news through my BBC World News highlights podcast. That way I still get to hear about things like the presidential election and how my 401K is now worthless, but I get to hear it in BBC News Voice, which is infinitely more soothing. Plus they call him "Ba-RACK O-BAAAHHHH-Ma" over there. Which I then imitate for the next 5 minutes. Try it at home for your own enjoyment. Unless you're my father, in which case you see NOTHING about this scenario to enjoy, thank you very much.

Anyway.

Watching the news, where I learned that:

1) A certain Chihuahua-themed movie has made a lot of money at the box office. I hope everyone who paid money to see that is very, very ashamed of themselves right now. They should be even more ashamed if they took children with them.

2) After seeing said steaming-pile-of-Chihuahua-crap-masquerading-as-film, many people are now interested in owning their own Chihuahuas.

3) The Humane Society of Utah is trying to alert people to the fact that they actually have quite a lot of Chihuahuas who need homes, so people may want to come see them before visiting (and paying big bucks to) a breeder.

The best part, though, is how the Humane Society ended up with all the tiny, rat-like dogs. They came from the Los Angeles area. People bought Chihuahua puppies, the puppies got too big for the purses they were meant to ride around in, and then their owners tossed them into animal shelters in such volume that they had to start shipping them out to other states.

Now, I won't lie, they showed footage of the dogs at some sort of Chihuahua Open House and they flashed on this tiny black puppy that had both me and(!!!) GH going, "Awww." But if anything, this situation would seem to be a warning against choosing a certain breed just because they made a movie about it. I'm just saying.

I know what game you're trying to play, here

A local news station reports that retailers are beginning their Christmas sales early in anticipation of a "sluggish" holiday buying season. This, for the retailers, is a smart idea. As the authors of Unplug the Christmas Machine point out, "Advertisers discovered that the amount of money people spent was influenced more by the length of the advertising campaign than the length of people's gift lists" (p.19). So it doesn't really matter how many people we're buying for or how much money we tell ourselves we're going to spend. The longer the stuff stares us in the face, the more likely we are to buy it. This discovery was made during the first big US holiday advertising campaigns of the early 20th century.

Only here's the thing. Couldn't this year be a chance for people to realize that maybe they don't have to do the big huge debt-inducing celebrating they've been doing? And that it can be okay to simplify and the world won't stop?

It's been interesting listening to editorials about Our Current Economic Crisis, and how what really needs to happen is for Americans to get out there and spend. By being good little consumers, we can save the day, the country, AND THE WORLD.

Except that logic seems wrong to me. I mean, maybe it would help the GNP and the businesses who are making less this year than they're used to, but would it actually help us as individuals? Telling us to run out there and spend money on things we may not need and almost certainly can't afford? Because maybe I don't want to jump onto your Hamster Wheel of Disposable Crap, government. And yes, I'm sure all of our insatiable greed for whatever is newest, best, biggest, and shiniest has helped our economy. Until, you know, we saw the consumer debt amount climb and the bankruptcy and foreclosure rates rise. Because that's never bad.

I'm not an economist, at all. But I do wonder what would happen if, once Our Current Economic Crisis settles down, we started making smarter and simpler choices and blew raspberries at those who tell us it's our patriotic duty to be the World's Biggest Consumers.

Why we need to beef up math in the schools

I'm not even talking about my own numeral difficulties, which are real and varied, on account of having never actually learned the complete times tables since I switched schools just after we covered the 9s. Sigh . . . it ever plagues me, my ignorance of how 12 interacts with the other numbers. Not enough to get me to LEARN it, mind you.

Anyway. This is about a couple situations my coworkers recently found themselves in.

Coworker #1 attended a football game last night and was fortunate enough to sit in front of an obscenities-bellowing man. I'm sure you'll agree they make the best company. At one point the guy started yelling the following, over and over again:

"$&@% %$#@, you *%$#!!!! You can't just play two-thirds, you need to play the WHOLE HALF!!!"

Um . . . . because a half is . . . more . . . than two-thirds?

Coworker #2 then spoke of her experience in some big retail store where candy sticks were advertised as being 10 cents each OR 2 sticks for $.25. She asked the saleswoman about this and the woman seriously did not see what the problem was. She kept reassuring my coworker that it's cheapest to buy 2 sticks for 25 cents because that was a deal.

I weep for us. No wonder our economy is tanking.

I decided to stay married, though.

This year my siblings exchanged names for Christmas really, really early because the theme is Handmade. We don't have to hand-make the thing, but somebody has to. (And that person should ideally not be a 4-yr old in the Philippines.) So I was talking to GH about my plans for gift-giving, and how I'd like to get things done as early as possible. In the middle of my prattling, he makes this plea.

GH: Please don't ever buy me a tie as a gift. I mean, if you see a tie you want me to wear and you buy it for me, I'll wear it. But I don't want ties for Christmas or my birthday. Or socks. Or anything practical. I only want IMpractical gifts.

(As if the Jack Bauer statuary hadn't tipped me off a little bit there.)

Later that night . . .

Me: So, now that ties and socks are out, what's on your Christmas list?

GH: (laughing) Christmas is forever away, I don't know what I want.

Me: No ideas at all? Isn't there anything you already know you want or need?

GH: Well how can I know what I want for Christmas? The ads aren't even out yet.

And that's when I blinked rapidly and probably made the face that Amyjane says I make for a second when someone has said something I find horrifying or stupid, before I manage to get it together and attempt a (really inadequate) poker face.

Me: Um, are you serious? You have to have the ads TELL you what to want? And then you end up asking for things that you were blissfully unaware of until the advertisers informed you that you need them?

GH: Something like that, I guess.

Me: I love you. But you are everything that is wrong with America and possibly the world.

I relayed this conversation to Jenny and Ed later, because I was still so flabbergasted at the thought that I married a man who willingly buys into The Christmas Machine.

Ed: Wow, he wait for the ads to decide what he wants? I always just go for the practical stuff I already need so I don't have to buy it for myself.

Jenny: Wait. HE DOESN'T HAVE A LIST???????

So yeah, Christmas should be fun times! I think a good way to teach GH about the True Meaning of Simplified Pretentious Hippie Christmas will be to make his gift out of newspaper, hemp, and love.

Does anyone have any good ideas? Or have you been given awful handmade gifts that I could use as a model?

Fw: fw: fw: fw: fw: fw: fw: fw: fw:

Let's talk about email forwards. I used to be under the impression that the people who persist in sending them out all the time were one or many of these things:

1. Naive in that they actually believe the one about baby Angela's kidneys and how only your email forwards will save her life.

2. Old and just getting into the computer thing and not yet realizing how obnoxious forwards are.

3. Stupid in that they assume that I want to read the same things they like to read about the flying angels and the sunsets.

4. Alarmists who feel it's better to be safe than sorry, and so send out every safety-related forward ever written. Watch out for those HIV needles at the gas tanks, folks!

5. Possessors of a juvenile sense of humor and must therefore forward every single "funny" email they receive. They don't seem to realize that I will judge them and their sense of humor for this.

6. People who mistakenly believe that sending 3 email forwards per day is considered "keeping in touch." Note: it's not.

I did not realize that there's another category altogether--a category Steeped in Evil. A friend of mine receives multiple email forwards from an acquaintance of hers. These forwards are political in nature and are intended to warn the general public about the little-known character defects and secret world-destroying plans and puppy-skinning habits of a certain Presidential candidate. When my friend gets forwards like this she always looks them up on a myth-debunking site and then sends the relevant information back to the sender. Because she was raised right. And breast-fed.

After a few rounds of this, the sender responded that she doesn't necessarily trust those debunking sites. (Because an anonymous email that's been circling the globe at the mercy of half-wits is way more trustworthy.) And then, friends, she said THESE WORDS:

I stopped looking everything up and forwarded things that I thought were important. I have read a lot about [candidate's name (misspelled)] and I do not like him. I believe he will ruin this country.

So . . . let's look at this. This woman is deliberately choosing to pass on information without checking first--information that she knows has a high likelihood of being false. She is, in effect, saying that truth and accuracy don't matter and that she is perfectly fine with spreading lies if they happen to support her own bad opinion of a person. Also, how is something supposed to be important if it's not even true?

This, to me, is one of the more reprehensible things I've ever heard of. You start here, and you end up eating babies.

Taking the c-l out of "classy"

Last night I got an email from a Right-Thinking Friend who also designs invitations (not Cicada). This is what my horrified RTF wrote, while still in the throes of horror:

A friend wants me to do her sister's wedding invites and thank-you cards. The instructions are "really classy, they want everything to be very elegant and classy, white lilies, very very classy . . ." To go along with this theme, they want a photo card thank-you with a picture of the couple in their wedding attire. They will then leave a stack of these cards on the gift table and guests can just pick one up and feel thanked.

People.

People.

I was actually joking about this exact sort of thing yesterday afternoon with GF and his sisters. GF realized for the first time that we would be expected to write individual thank-yous to the people who give us gifts and promptly went into a coma. And, with not a little bit of relish, I informed his inert self that the groom gets to write the thank-yous to his own side of the family (which is about 12.7 times larger than my side). Then I laughed oh so evilly. So we were joking about the white-trash alternatives, like form letters that you fill in and stamp with a signature, or writing "thank you" on the wedding favors and calling it good, or leaving blank thank-you cards on the gift table.

So imagine how awesome it was to learn, not 5 hours later, about someone who is actually doing that and actually thinks it's okay and thinks that a wedding with such a thing can still be considered a classy affair.

Because guess what. Something like that? That completely negates the thank-you. It really does. It's pretty much akin to the bride throwing this "very very classy" wedding and then very, very classily climbing up on the gift table, taking a dump on it, and passing out plastic sporks for people to take a bit home.

Higher Power of Censorship

Susan Patron is one of the speakers at the conference I'm at. She wrote last year's Newbery Winner, The Higher Power of Lucky. You may remember the associated furor over the inclusion of the word "scrotum" (a dog's, mind you), which I commented on briefly. She'll be speaking during one of the lunches so as to remind this group of important things like the part where we are meant to be librarians and not raving lunatics who freak out over the idea of the word scrotum existing in books or on mammals. Not that I think we couldn't do with a few less scroti in the world, because we sure could.

She's having a book signing later today. Thing is, I didn't actually love her book. So I don't know if I want to buy it. If I do, though, I want her to sign her name and then write the word SCROTUM on the title page. Because then my copy will say it four times instead of three.

It can't love you back, people

I went to the temple this morning and when I got to the front desk the sweet elderly temple worker asked my roommate and I if we had cell phones with us. I smiled and said, "No."I refrained from adding, ". . . because I was raised by humans." Even though that's what I think every single time. You already know I have strong feelings on this issue.

But seriously, in the temple? My mom volunteers in the Anchorage Temple and they've had problems with people's cell phones ringing inside their lockers, over and over and over again. I told mom that she should use her master key to unlock the locker, take the cell phone out, and leave a note on the outside of the locker which reads, "Your cell phone had to be removed because it was causing a disturbance. It is being held for you in the temple president's office. Feel the shame."

Only it gets better. Now before we go in for a session, after we've already changed into pretty white dresses, a temple worker announces that if anyone has a cell phone with them then they need to shut it off and go put it back in their locker. When they say this I always look around in disbelief, wondering why anyone would get changed, leave all their other stuff in their locker, but then slip a cell phone into the pocket of their temple dress. I mean, are they thinking they're going to pop out and make a call if things get boring? Are they expecting a call--a call which they feel they're going to be able to answer in the middle of a session? Because really, there's actually no opportunity for that.

I mentioned this to my friend Crow (he of the merit badges fame) and he said he actually saw that happen. He was at the temple and heard a cell phone go off in the middle of the session. Then he saw a woman reach into her pocket, take the phone out, check it, and then put it back in her pocket. And this was after two requests to please ditch the phones.

FOR. THE. LOVE.

I think my brain would have ruptured if I'd been there. I actually had a mild seizure when I heard the story. Crow doesn't think any of the temple workers noticed. Because if they do, I believe they're supposed to stop the session and wait until the cell phone owner gets up to take the phone out. Since he is a kinder person than I am, he was trying to think of a reason why one might legitimately need to have their phone with them. I told him there isn't a reason, so he should feel free to judge that person. And maybe throw stuff at her if he ever sees her again.

Because really, if there is a 2-hour unit of time in which you seriously cannot shut your phone off without dire consequences then you just don't go to the temple during that time. Or to church. Or to a wedding. Or a movie. Or a play. You just don't. Also? Quit texting during church. That is just trashy and it makes me want to find some large cell-phone-shaped pacifier and cram it in your mouth or perhaps call your mother up and ask what warped weaning methods she used on you because clearly you do not know how to detach. Which is when Crow told me this gem:

The members of his bishopric sit up there on the stand on Sunday and send texts to members of the congregation.

Yeah. They DO that. One Sunday his bishop came up to him and was all, "Hey [Crow], you never answered my text. I sent it during sacrament meeting." Crow responded with, "Well, I don't bring my phone to church with me. Aaaaaand it's kind of embarrassing that we're even having this conversation." Only maybe that last part was in his head.

Perhaps I should lay off the drugs

The other morning I pulled up to an intersection manned by school crosswalk guard mommies. I came to an obedient and safe stop just in time to watch a large black and white turkey start waddling its way across the white striped lines of the crosswalk.

He didn't make it all the way, though, because one of the mommies rushed out into the crosswalk and started shooing him back over onto the sidewalk he'd started from.

So. No idea what was going on there. Is he some elementary student's 4-H project who broke out to follow his owner to school in the manner of Lassie? That turkey pretty much wins the prize for Weirdest Thing I've Ever Seen Crossing the Street in Front of Me. And this is in the face of quite stiff competition in the form of Idiot BYU Students Who Pay No Attention to Traffic Signals and Cross the Road Like a Herd of Retarded Sheep Right in front of My Car and Would So Deserve It If I Just Rammed Them for Being Stupid.

Who would your winners be?

The gum chewing post

As I've spent the last two days sick with the flu, I've had time to think about world-saving ideas. My latest one?

No More Chewing Gum

I don't see the point of it. It's not food. It has no nutritional benefit. It's not biodegradable, so it'll be around forever. Just take a look at the commercials. All they can do is try to make a cool commercial without really mentioning the gum, because what can they even say about it? "Um, we think you should put this flavored tar in your mouth and chew it over and over again. No reason."

As pointless and stupid as chewing gum is, my bigger problem is with the gum chewers. After all, wads of gum don't end up in water fountains, city sidewalks, under desks, and in carpets all by themselves. No indeed. It is the stupid idiot chewers who leave it there, and I would have no problem with such behavior incurring penalties like tongue forking.

Here's the other thing, and this is where I'm going to hurt some feelings. But only because I care.
You look stupid when you chew gum.

You really do. This is especially true if you are the kind who simply cannot keep your lips together while chewing. Yes, I'm talking to you. You look like a cow, standing in a field, staring vacantly while chewing your cud. And it's nasty. I don't want to hear the smacking of your lips. I don't want to see your gum rolling around in your mouth, and I don't want to watch your jaw going up and down, up and down, over and over again. It's just gross and it makes you, literally, look like a slack-jawed idiot. The words that come out of your mouth automatically have less intellectual merit when they're accompanied by the sticky, spitty, snapping sounds of chewing gum.

So. Now that we've established that, I think we can get rid of the gum. Exceptions will be for people who are trying to give up smoking and need to have something in their mouth, and also for pregnant women. Because so help me I'm not about to tell a pregnant woman what she can and can't chew. I would recommend that she chew quietly and with closed lips if she doesn't want people to moo at her, but still: her choice.

For those of you whining about needing something after a meal to freshen your breath, I believe they've invented a special new thing called breath mints. Look into them.