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December 29, 2007
Running Amok at the Aquarium
So the other day, my mother and I accompanied our out of town relatives to the Aquarium, not realizing it was going to be one of the busiest times of year for the place. Throughout the Aquarium, of course, are those neat little tanks where you can crawl under and pop up "inside" the tank in a little area surrounded by the glass. Me and the other two cousins had crammed ourselves up in there on two of them as we made our way through the River Journey section, patiently waiting for the aunts and mothers to take pictures for posterity. On the third insider tank, however, I waited for a batch of kids to take their turn and then dove in, trying to claim the tank for the minute it would take to get the other two cousins in and snap a photo of us with a particularly gigantic crab.
As soon as I crawled in however, a beastly little porker of a kid pops up right in my face--there isn't much room in the area. I say to him "Excuse me, but I'm in here right now." He replies (very loudly) "I DON'T CARE!!!" So I said, "Would you mind waiting your turn?" "NO!" Then his brother crawls in. There's only two entrances in here, and I'm sitting on my feet so I can't get out at this point. Then a third kid decides to cram himself in there. I have children crawling all over me. The mother, meanwhile, is just standing there laughing in a helpless "oh, those kids" sort of way. Eventually the kids get tired of me expressing my displeasure at them and I managed to get out. So we continued on our way through the aquarium.
As we get to the bottom of the next ramp, the mother, her friend, and her brood catch up to us. Pretty pissed about the whole thing, I called over to her "Thanks for letting your kids sit on me. That was pretty fun." She laughs as if I'm not saying that sarcastically and says "Oh, he's only one. He doesn't know any better" (not that this excuses the other kids, the eldest of whom was about 8). So I said as nicely as I could manage "Well, it's your job to teach them better."
I walked away at this point, having said all I wanted to say on the matter, but I noticed the woman and her friend were having a little powwow down the hall way. As I worked my way in that direction, trying to continue on to the next exhibit, the friend says loudly and pointedly at me "I just don't understand why an adult gets so upset over children..." So I turned to her and said "I'm allowed to enjoy the Aquarium just like anybody else." The friend gets all shocked and appalled and begins to imply that those tanks are for children only and I shouldn't get upset about what happened when I shouldn't have been in there in the first place. My mom pulled me away to get me out of the escalating argument and she happened to pull me in the direction of where the lady's kids had run off. So the lady waddled over as fast as she could, passive aggressively grunting "Oh no! Let me get him away from you," completely ignoring the obvious fact that my problem was not so much her kid, but what her kid had done. I lost my temper at that point and dropped the f-bomb so only she could hear (since I'm not really out to ruin every kid's vocabulary), told her to f-off and threw up a talk to the hand.
First off, there is nothing indicating these things are for kids only, and I've seen young folks like me and grownups enjoying them plenty of times before.
Second of all, wether or not I was supposed to be in there has no effect on whether or not you should allow your children to crawl all over a complete stranger, especially one obviously not enjoying the attention, and one who can not abandon the "child only" area until your kids get the hell off of her.
I was tired long before this incident of parents who treat the entire world as one giant playground for their children and who become personally offended when even the smallest part of it seems to not have been designed with their particular little fledglings in mind. How dare people create television shows tailored to adult tastes! As for situations that call on you to encourage your child to consider others, at the risk of damaging his confidence in fulfilling every impulse? Preposterous! An adult reminding a child that it is polite to wait his or her turn? Out of line! The community at large having any influence on instilling certain etiquette and values in the younger members of society? An infringement on our God-given American freedoms!
I'm sure these statements could come across as sensationalized by one bad experience, but I am ever so tired of commercials for channel blockers and trying to get my errands run while either hearing some parent spanking the bejesus out of an unruly youngster or completely ignoring the kid's pterodactyl-like shrieks and tantrums at the risk of an form of discipline shattering their toddler's psyche. It's always worse around the holidays with so many stressed out families running about, but I do wish I weren't constantly tuned into the problems-with-child-discipline channel when I venture out of my house.
Edit: I hear about it even IN my house!! Some crud on the news about a little girl trying to win Hannah Montana tickets by writing a false essay for a contest about her father dying in Iraq. The mom says she didn't know the essays had to be true. As my dad grumbled at the TV, "Way to teach your kid values."
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December 24, 2007
The Candles Lasted Just Long Enough
This is the first Christmas where I really feel different from the passing of two of my grandparents in the past year-ish. I suppose last Christmas was too close in proximity to my grandmother to have the kind of distance it takes to be aware that there is a distance.
While we were baking the traditional "Christmas biscuits" (very thick, frosted sugar cookies) my mom commented that we can usually count on my grandfather (who passed over the summer) to eat much of the sugary bounty. Seeing as how it was my grandmother who passed a little over a year ago who invented the mighty Christmas biscuit, I suggested that we pull a little Dia De Los Muertos action a month late. Instead of leaving out cookies for Santa (which we haven't done in many years since I outgrew that particular tradition) we set up a little plate with some Hanukkah candles and two Christmas biscuits.
We lit the candles before reading through a few David Sedaris Christmas favorites, including "Six To Eight Black Men" (an account of the bizarre Dutch version of the Christmas legend) and "Dinah the Christmas Whore." Being a big fan of synchronicity, it made my Christmas Eve to see the candles lasted just long enough for the stories. It's nice to know Geffie and Sir enjoyed our unconventional holiday literature selection, as they were both big fans of reading aloud. And, as my father pointed out in his lovely remarks at the funeral over the summer, Sir was especially great at doing the voices for different characters whilst reading aloud.
It's nice to still share the holiday with family, even if they aren't here in a scientifically explainable sense.
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December 21, 2007
Here's a charming Swiss mountain dog I ironically bumped into not when I was actually IN Switzerland but the week after when I was in Italy. He was enjoying an early afternoon stroll through the midst of a wedding party taking over the town square in a small Italian town and didn't seem the least bit flustered by all the fancy dressed people taking up his turf.
Have a good last twenty minutes of morning and then a good afternoon! And here's some more funky creatures on The Ark!
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December 19, 2007
Worldess Wednesday
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December 14, 2007
Friday Creature
You may think this is an ordinary, run-of-the-mill gull, but it is in fact a British gull, and even fancier than that, a Doverian gull, as I encountered it during my first weekend rampaging England all alone over the summer. I found it down near some fountains a ways up from the cold, gravely beach along the edges of town. There are some quaint old hotels along there, but sadly the rest of the town was a bit run down and vaguely depressing.
Hope the rest of the ark is more cheerful than Dover!
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December 07, 2007
Ten Most Anti-Christian Movies of All Time
New York Entertainment's article "Ten Most Anti-Christian Movies of All Time" has been making the rounds, so I thought I would share it here. It's a pretty interesting list.
I suppose it's not hard to cook up a list of A. Movies that cast a hard glance at Catholicism, or B. A list of movies that have made some pope or another mad. Stigmata, The Exorcist and The Da Vinci Code didn't make the New York Entertainment list, I noticed, although they did ping Belief Net's "Top Ten Most Controversial Religious Movies of All Time".
I personally don't care a whole lot about that particular genre, since everyone disagrees about something a some point for some reason. I have to admit though, Christopher Durang's play Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You has been a favorite of mine since Dear Boyfriend directed it his senior year of high school. Sure, my fondness may be related somewhat to the oh-so-bizarre sight of my once-beloved Cabbage Patch doll being crucified on stage in that particular production, but it's a hilarious spoof of Catholicism.
Aside from that though, I prefer a subtler approach to the whole debate/question of religion in art. Like I said before, we're all going to quibble about something, so I'd rather see people play with ideas instead of argue pointlessly over them. The Last Temptation of Christ and Jesus Christ Superstar are some of my favorite Christian/Church themed movies, and although Christians got plenty mad about those too, I think they bring up much more interesting points about the faith than Christian movies Christians actually liked, such as that horrible Passion of the Christ business. It seems terribly narcissistic to me to focus on the brutality of the sacrifice, to revel the artistic process of measuring the exact extent of excruciation a man endured. It seems far more interesting to me to examine the oft-ignored sacrifices Jesus might have made, and for some reason people seem to think that looking at anything besides the last day is a giant blasphemy.
Last Temptation and Superstar both highlight for me that Jesus gave up his life long before going to chat with Pilate. The way the story usually goes, he never got the girl, and had to give up a nice, normal, comparatively easy life of a wife, kids, and all that to go wandering around in the desert preaching a message not many people wanted to hear and wondering the whole time if he was crazy or if the god of Moses really WAS talking to him. So while Temptation and Superstar do include scenes of the passion, they don't need to make it explicit to get the point across that Jesus' whole time on earth was one giant sacrifice. Furthermore, Superstar especially looks at the kind of interpretations of Jesus' message and the following he had-- over and over the poor guy sings about how no one quite gets it, even his right hand man Judas.
For that matter, I'm also a fan of Garth Ennis' Preacher graphic novel series, because although its downright sacreligious, and lampoons The Church horribly with its Grail organization, it is one of the funniest comic series I've read in ages and it sure does call into question the big split between God throwing down fire, brimstone, judgment and damnation all the time and then calling himself "A loving god." That is one series sure to make the pope's hit list, but it's about so much more than the church and religion (Westerns, the army, vampires, friendship, good shooting, true love, car thievery, Southern Gothic etc.) that really it's just an interesting take on one huge part of our lives, like most of the things listed in parenthesis above have become in the American consciousness.
So there's my food for thought for the day. When I go to see the latest movie to stir up the Catholics sometime this weekend, I'll be keeping my eye out not for what everyone else is whining about but to see if The Golden Compass offers any of the books' more diverse and subtle musings on religion beyond the basic "Church authority skews the real deal" concept.
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December 05, 2007
Worldess Wednesday
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Happy Repeal Day, Everyone!
Happy Repeal Day! On this day in 1933 Americans were legally free to drink once more, as the government repealed the constitutional amendment that started Prohibition.
So everyone, fill a glass, and have a sip, and celebrate the end of one of our sillier moments as a nation.
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December 01, 2007
The Magical Land of Auction
The last auction I went to (where I picked up the fabulous minks) was especially wonderful, because I happened to suddenly see the word the way I might have 15 years ago, or if I suddenly were switched on to be a children's author. The part of me that still suspects the back of entertainment armoires is not all there is to the story, even if they aren't proper wardrobes, came alive and I was lucky enough to have my camera on hand.
There are mysterious storytellers frozen by the Sultan's enchanters and stuck in the back of his treasury along with the decommissioned flying rugs.
More AuctionLand after the jump.
Continue reading "The Magical Land of Auction"
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