"People don't know how to title things," the youngest grumbles as she plays with her iTunes. "Look at this. Someone's given me 'Fun, Fun, Fun' by the Beachboys, and they've..."

I join her. "...only capitalized the first word."

"Yeah!" she nods. "It's not a sentence, duh, it's a title."

I am so proud.

With an amusing tagline ("Only a ball should bounce"), one might hope for something a little playful and less dismally ugly. One might hope, but one would be disappointed. Bitter experience has taught us that D-cup-wearers can't be choosers.



Appearance is one thing, style another. With such a clever tagline, one could reasonably hope for more from the product blurb:

An ideal bra for women
engaging in high impact activities
such as horseback riding, running,
soccer, volleyball, aerobics,
police officers...

On the other hand, one is greatly amused in speculating precisely what "high impact activities such as... police officer" could be.

Oh, yes. That Reading Challenge.



I absolutely intended to post about my January books in January. I should be having a toasty February here in frosty* Ottawa, what with all those good intentions I make then completely forget.

(*Not so frosty today: three degrees and rain, rain, rain. "Is this it, mum?" my 15-year-old wanted to know. "Is spring here now?" I managed to choke out a "No, sweetie" before drowning in laughter at her dopiness sweet innocence. )

Missed intentions notwithstanding, I have been reading! I have been visiting the library! I just haven't been writing about it. Because I'm disorganized that way.

So. My January books:

The Omnivore's Dilemma -- Terrific book. It will make you reconsider how you perceive your food, and may even change what/how you eat. The first two sections are by far the more engrossing/compelling. I understand why the third section was necessary, but it dragged. Apart from the discussion of meat-eating, which was interesting, I could easily have skipped the entire thing. (In this section I primarily learned that Michael Pollan sure does like himself...) This does not detract from the value of the book, which I liked so well that I went out and bought my own copy. But it started as a library book, so that counts.

The Uncommon Reader -- The unexpected fallout of royal bookworm-ery. Funny and clever -- and short!

The Aging Brain -- Interesting subject matter, unremittingly boring book. Badly in need of a stern and unyielding editor. The man has no idea how to streamline his ideas, clearly believing that the more technical terms one crams into every paragraph, the more erudite one appears. My brain aged a solid decade just getting through the first two pretentious chapters.

Garden Spells -- Quirky and entertaining light read.

The Russian Album -- My Canadiana quota.

There were more, but I've forgotten. Oh, the shame. Still, five for the month puts me well on track toward my goal of fifty for the year.

I wandered lonely as a cloud...

The boy stood on the burning deck...

In Xanadu did Kublai Khan...

Come into the garden, Maud...

Come, madam, come, all rest my powers defy...

Lazy, laughing, languid Jenny...

A panther is much like a leopard...

Tiger, tiger, burning bright...

Do not go gentle into that good night...

Once upon a midnight dreary...


I grew up with poetry. My grandfather, born and educated in Britain at a time when poetry recitation was a mainstay, sought to fill the gap in his grandchildren's Canadian education with a fine round of poetry. It was never dreary, it was fun. I loved memorizing the rolling phrases, I loved hearing him recite a poem with enthusiasm and zest, or, when the poem demanded, with great spooky mystery, and I loved doing the same.

And yet, when I hear the strains of a poetry-reading beginning on the CBC, I almost always turn the radio off -- generally with an exclamation of exasperation -- within the first fifteen seconds. I just can't stand it.

When my grandfather and I shared poetry, it vibrated with energy. When I hear poetry declaimed on the radio, it is moaned in a deadpan, the words falling like some relentless drip, drip, drip. Not dripping of water, clean and fresh. More like, oh... the plop, plop, plop of (so I imagine) sludge from a sewage pipe.

Who wants to listen to that? The poetry of my childhood was not "kiddy poetry". It was rich and layered and nuanced, full of marvellous sounds and meaning -- and yet it was presented as exciting, interesting, full of LIFE.

There is no life in their droning. Only tedious, pretentious efforts at sounding portentious.

Or something. I have no idea why they feel they must read the stuff like that. Why turn something so rich and vibrant into a tedious, dreary droning? It doesn't have to be that way. I've heard the odd Poetry Slam on the CBC, where poetry is turned into a rhythmic, pulsating form of performance art. Very cool.

Let's have more of that, shall we? More life and less droooooning.

I've found the perfect reading challenge for me:



You decide whether you're going to read 12, 25, or 50 books from your local library this year, then you leave a comment (and a link, if you have a blog), making your commitment public on J. Kaye's site.

I'm in for 50.

I won't even break a sweat.

Anyone else?

"... all life on earth can be viewed as a competition among species for the solar energy captured by photosynthesis..." (The Omnivore's Dilemma).

The sentence caused a flicker of response, a spark something interesting begun in my mind. I set the book down to consider, to let that spark develop. Just think about that sentence for a minute. All life on earth derives from the sun. Amazing, that. A flash in my mind of solar particles streaming to earth, warming the soil, spurring to growth, and the whole rest of everything else on this tiny planet in a distant solar system in a backwater galaxy burgeoning out from that soil. It's mysical, it's miraculous. Just because we can explain certain bits of how it all fits together doesn't detract from the wonder of it all.

Amazing.

It's been a while since I've attempted to pray, but this seemed to call for it. For along with the wonder, the awe at the intricacy and inter-twinedness of it all, was gratitude. Maybe I'm just globally grateful to be the recipient of life, maybe I'm grateful to a specific entity -- yes, god -- but whatever it may be, it seemed appropriate to express that gratitude.

So I tried to form a prayer, and...

it didn't work.

The salutation... "Oh, lord"... seemed pompous and false. "Father God", which (being fatherless) I relished in my adolescence, didn't work, either. I shied away from both... with a surprisingly visceral revulsion. Wrong. They were just wrong.

Okay, so skip the salutation. On to the meat of it. I struggled to line up the words in the best order, to best express what I was feeling, and again, it didn't work. It was so damned artificial. Like I was composing a stiff and proper thank-you note. And it wasn't so much the tenor of the thing -- formal, casual, ponderous or light -- no matter how I tried it, whipping out phrases and tossing them away like discarded garments, none of them worked. The problem wasn't the tone of voice, the problem was the words themselves.

Not which words I was choosing, just words. Language, at all.

I love words. I think it's possibly humanity's highest achievement, language. There are few things I love more than the puzzle of trying to fit the words to express the meaning, playing with them, ordering them, picking and choosing to get just the right nuance, feeling, to connect my mind with yours. It's profoundly satisfying to me.

But in this instance, words were not bridging gaps. Words were taking the feeling and reducing it, channeling it, limiting it.

In fact, the more I struggled to package up my responses and mail them off to that great ear in the sky, the more the whole endeavour just became ... embarrassing. The words didn't fit. They were profoundly limiting, and, thereby, false.

Limiting not just of my feelings, but of where I was sending them. The expressions of God that I grew up with don't really fit my perception of him/her/it now. "Father" God doesn't do it. (Nor would "mother".) Those words make whole thing too concrete, too specific, too bounded in physical reality, in human experience. "Lord"? Good lord. I think not. I don't think that way any more. Once more, embarrassing.

Instead, I simply focussed on the feelings of wonderment, satisfaction, appreciation for this mystical, miraculous, marvellous world, in all its astonishing intricacy.

If there is (as I believe) a god out there, and if he/she/it notes and cares what the specks in creation think or do (I'm largely dubious), then surely he/she/it doesn't need words -- words of one particular language from one particular speck (me!) on one of uncountable millions of planets in the myriad of galaxies -- to grasp what I'm trying to convey.

So I focussed on the feeling and tried to keep words out of it -- harder to do than one might think -- and trusted that it was being received. And if not, if god doesn't listen to the burbling of the teeming masses, then certainly the exercise is good for me. Awe, gratitude, appreciation are all good for the soul. (Or, if you will, the psyche, or,if you wish to reduce it that far, simply something as prosaic as your mental health.)

I did, and, though I was stumbling and clumsy in my efforts, it, unlike my abortive attempts at formal prayers, felt right.

I think I need to learn to meditate.

I have a love-hate relationship with the idea of honesty. Yes, I believe it's a virtue, but I do not believe it's "always the best policy". Does anyone, really?

"Does this dress make me look fat?"

If the question is asked in the changing room, you can be honest, and thereby prevent your friend from buying something that makes her look like a ship in a tent. If the question is asked moments before stepping onto the stage of an awards banquet, you lie, lie, lie. What could possibly be the value of perfect honesty at such a moment?

People don't consider that principles/values can and do come into conflict: when honesty and kindness come into conflict -- and they often do -- which will you choose? Many would vigorously declare for "Honesty, of course!", as if honesty is the only path to integrity. Too frequently choosing kindness is seen as mere squeamishness, a lack of moral courage. Sometimes it is, of course, but...

Keeping something to yourself, refusing to expose person A to person B, allowing something to pass unremarked... all these various kindnesses can be harder to maintain that honesty. But at what cost honesty? Is honesty always worth the price?

And even then, when hard, clear honesty is the only way to proceed, must it be done without kindness? Must it simply be blurted out because "you need to know", or "you have a right to know", or "you need to get your shit together"? The gut-wrenching pain that honesty can cause needs to be approached with compassion, not blurted out, all the pain only the recipient's problem, because "it's for your own good."

How came knee-jerk, unreasoned honesty to be seen as a sign of integrity or purer virtue? That kind of honesty is the refuge of the simplistic. It's not high-mindedness, it's simply a lack of thought; it displays a certain shallowness of thinking. Why waste time and emotional energy weighing pros and cons when you can simply blurt out the callous facts -- and then claim the moral high ground for your insensitivity?

I can be very straight when need be; I rarely see good reason to be cruel with it. Clarity does not equate brutality, and when pressed, I'd rather err on the side of kindness.

I've often noted that people who dish out that kind of honesty are often outraged when they get a dose of it back... which shows a certain lack of integrity. Someone who weighs the pros and cons of honesty vs kindness, who knows the pain of honesty and deals it only when necessary and only to the degree required, that person will accept honesty when dealt similarly.

Those who dish it out willy-nilly, they don't like getting it back so much.

Methinks they deserve more than they're getting.

Atoms are very, very weird.

I am no scientist, but I have always, for all my education in the Arts and Humanities, been fascinated by science of all sorts. I researched and wrote a report on bees when I was eight, made models of clouds when I was ten, devoured books on astronomy when I was eleven and twelve, designed simple circuits in my early teens.

It's probably sadly telling that absolutely none of this happened under the tutelage or with the encouragement of an actual science teacher. I did it all on my own, because it was interesting. Perhaps if I'd stumbled across the right teacher, I'd have charged down a totally different career path. Who knows?

Science classes were intermittently interesting, but thankfully by the time I reached high school I had long since perceived the distinction critical to the survival of intellectual curiosity: Education and schooling are not the same thing. If you're lucky, there's an overlap. If you're very lucky, there's a considerable overlap. A lot of the time, there's remarkably little, or at least there was for me.

The corollary to this distinction is the awareness that just because you don't like school, doesn't mean you don't like learning. You may hate your math class and still like math. To be bored witless in your physics class (which I was), does not mean that physics is boring. Thankfully I grasped this distinction young, so my love of learning proceeded unquashed by bored teachers and learning-hostile fellow students. (No, I didn't let my peers know I did all this stuff. Do I look stupid?)

So I suffered schooling, and I did my learning (well, a good portion of it) elsewhere. Which is marvellous, for now that I'm no longer in school, I'm still learning! Unimaginable purgatory to many of my adolescent peers. I hope they're very happy slinging hash 30 years later...

(Nyah, nyah, nyah.)

It is no surprise, then, that I'm reading "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson, and learning all sorts of stuff. It's the sort of book that annoys the crap out even the most long-suffering of spouses, as the person reading the book is forever calling out an excited...

"Listen to this!" (No, really. Listen!)

"For all their devoted attention, your atoms don't actually care about you--indeed, don't even know that you are there.... (It is a slightly arresting notion that if you were to pick yourself apart with tweezers, one atom at a time, you would produce a mound of fine atomic dust, none of which had ever been alive but all of which had once been you.)"

Now, isn't that a thought to set you pondering?

And when you get to the bit of the book about atoms, your pondering achieves dizzying heights. If you think with Mr. Scott that "Ye canna change the laws of physics!", you haven't considered the atom. Because, oh! Listen to this!

On an atomic level, "electrons jump from one orbit to another without traveling across any intervening space" (teleportation?!?); certain atomic pairs work in instantaneous paralell, no matter how much distance lies between them (non-sentient telepathy?), and if that's not weird enough, "matter could pop into existence from nothing at all--'provided, ... it disappears again with sufficient haste.'"

It's not so much that you can't change the laws of physics as that the laws which apply to the larger reality are irrelevant to atomic reality. Which is a mind-boggler, right there.

Atoms are mostly empty space. Well, I knew that, from my (outrageously boring) grade eleven physics class. Have known it, therefore, for decades. But either I was never told, or never grasped, the implications of this. Implications, you ask? Well, just listen to THIS!

"When two objects come together in the real world...they don't actually strike each other. 'Rather,' as Timothy Ferris explains, 'the negatively charged fields of the two balls repel each other ... were it nor for their electrical charges they could, like galaxies, pass right through each other unscathed.' [Like GALAXIES?? I will be pursuing this later, you may be sure. Back to the quote now:] When you sit in a chair, you are not actually sitting there, but levitating above it at a height of one angstrom (a hundred millionth of a centimeter), your electrons and its electrons implacably opposed to any closer intimacy."

Floating through a reality of repelling electrons. Too bad the angstrom doesn't prevent numb bum on hard office chairs...

Science is fascinating, I tell you. Utterly, utterly fascinating.

The word cloud of Irreverent Mama:



Want one of your own? Hop on over here. Maybe you'll even decide to put YOURS on a t-shirt! Or a mug.

"Agh!" The wail from the bathroom is as heart-rending as it is loud. "Look at this! I can't go to school today, I just can't!"

Welcome to the world of body drama, where pimples and body odour are social crises, where lop-sided breasts and mid-cycle spotting bring fears of cancer and early demise, where every personal quirk is viewed as an abnormality that will bring unending public scorn on the sufferer.

At any given time, there are anywhere from one to five females in my home, ranging from 14 to 22 years old. (Not including me, obviously. My hormonal challenges are of a different, more, ah, mature nature.) Let me tell you, I know from body drama ...

It's tough, being a teen. Everything is changing, and changing quickly. Your body is out of control, your emotions are all over the place -- some days it seems your entire life is out of control.

Where do you go for information, instruction, and assurance? You might consider Nancy Amanda Redd's recently released "Body Drama". Nice to look at, nice to touch, and so well-designed -- visually and conceptually.

The book is perfectly structured to deliver the maximum information with each visit, no matter how long or short.

It is divided into five categories: Shape; Skin; Down There; Boobs; Hair and Nails. (A brief tangent: You know, I can accept the usefulness of the generic and innocuous "down there", but I cringe every time I hear or read the word "boobs". Can we not just call them breasts? "Boobs" is just so ... ugly and clunky and disrespectful of such lovely objects. Ugh.)

Body Drama is chock-full of terrific, solid, factual information. That is its foundtion. What makes it work is that Ms. Redd "gets" teens. Within each drama are three subheadings including "What if they notice?" Ah, yes. Remember? The all-powerful, omniscient "they" which is presumed by teens to be morbidly fascinated by every burp and hiccup of their lives, minds, and bodies. "What if they notice?" includes practical information on how to prevent the "drama" from being public, and why it probably doesn't really matter as much as you think if it does get out there.

Where Body Drama suggests that something is a bad idea -- tongue piercing, for example -- it doesn't stop at the reasons why it's a bad idea. Recognizing its adolescent audience, the great risk-takers, the tremendous don't-bother-me-with-facts, I-know-what-I-want's of the world, it then says, "But if you're going to ignore this good information, here's how to do it the safest way possible."

This is not a cop-out, this is reality. The thing about teens is, you can't make their decisions for them. Like it or not, they will make their own decisions, and some of them will be stupid ones. All you can do is provide them with good information -- all the good information -- and hope for the best.

And then, we come to the pictures. Amongst all the excellent information the book provides, there are pictures. Pictures, pictures, and more pictures. Pictures of zits, of stretch marks and head lice and cellulite. The pictures make the book so very visually appealing, and it is with the pictures that the possibility of offense arises. Because the pictures, they are plain, they are un-airbrushed, they are real. The squeamish out there will use terms like "explicit" and "graphic" -- and they'd be right, except for the tinge of negative moral judgment that accompanies such words.

Teens are curious about their bodies, and this curiosity is not just natural, it's appropriate. If they don't have the information, they are at huge risk, because not knowing stuff has never, in the history of humankind, prevented a teen from experimenting anyway.

So, yes, there are pictures of girls in there. Naked ones. There are pictures of breasts, because how else will you know the huge range of "normal"? And, the big one: there is a dual-page spread of 24 vulvas.

I confess it was a mild jolt, even to unflappable me, opening the book to that page, but it took me about 1.4 seconds to get over it, and get interested instead. Because men, they get to compare, don't they? All their "stuff" is right out there -- and I'll bet lots of boys have been traumatized by that very reality. But girls have a different anxiety, that of not knowing. Even if you take a peek at your own, for most straight women, that will be the only one you ever see. So seeing a bunch of them, seeing the variety, is interesting.

Some, however, will be horrified, and refuse to buy the book on that basis. Others will say, "Okay for my daughter, but I can't have it in the house, because what if my son sees it?"

What then? Well, then he will get to satisfy HIS curiosity, too, in a way that does not take him to porn sites. Because he will, you know. It is simple curiosity, not deviant urges, that takes most young teen males to those places, and once they're there, they can get hooked. That is NOT where I want any son of mine either spending his time, or getting his information about female sexuality. With Body Drama, he will get high-quality information that is respectful of women, information that teaches him about his future partner's health, needs, anxieties, information that will help him be a better husband and friend. So, yes, if my son were to pick up the book, I would not be ripping it from his hands.

I love this book. Optimally, it will be used by mothers and daughters together, to promote discussion, to answer questions, to just "talk girl-stuff". If you know your daughter needs the information, but you're too squeamish to start these conversations, you can leave it lying around where she'll find it.

I hope you don't decide to ban it from your home. Like it or not, your child will one day be a sexually active adult, and, no matter how you might like it to be otherwise, THEY decide when that happens, not you. What parents do is provide a moral/ethical framework, and solid, quality information for the decisions your child will inevitably, eventually, make. Because you want, above all things, for your child to stay safe and healthy.

And Body Drama is a wealth of quality information, presented in a way that stands a pretty good chance of being heeded. Not always an easy task, with teens. Well done, Nancy!

Came across a blog this morning. Fellow was introducing the meme he was about to do.

Said, "This is so gay".

What does that mean? What a bizarre thing to say. It's obviously some kind of insult, a slight. He's apparently feeling a bit silly about doing a meme. Being vaguely aware that he's said something potentially insulting, or maybe to try to prove he's not a homophobic asshole, he added immediately, "Not that there's anything wrong with THAT!"

If there's nothing wrong with being gay, you dork, why are you using it as an insult?

"This is so gay."

It carries as much meaning as... oh... "This is so tree."
"Can you believe how cloud that was??"
"God. She's just thinks she's so curtainrod."


Yeesh.

A friend gives me an article by Robert Fisk. I am urged to read it. Fisk is a 'great mind', says my friend. He 'doesn't tolerate fools gladly'. I've heard of Fisk, and even of the verb ('fisking') spawned by his rants, but never read him. (I know, I know. Shockingly insular North American am I. Given what I read of Mr. Fisk when I did investigate, I'll be back for more.)

But this particular article? I've heard this sort of thing before, and find it no more than an annoyance. Let me be clear. I'm well-read. I have decent grammar, a good vocabulary, I love the language and deplore sloppiness. I have a degree in English. Sometimes, sometimes I even manage to write something that sings, just a little. But this word snobbery, this 'zero tolerance' approach to word sins, galls me.

((But, Mr. Fisk: "Authoress"? Did anyone after George Eliot actually use that word? With a straight face?) Yes, this quibbling proves that I, too, have my fisk moments. It also proves that those who rant about words set themselves up for this kind of quibbling. However, I know that the quibbling is, at best, a clever-ish form of personal entertainment; at worst, nothing more than basest snobbery.)

Picture this:

You’re at a dinner party. The food is excellent, the furnishing comfortable, the people varied and interesting, but as the evening progresses, you find yourself feeling more and more uncomfortable. You’re not sure why, but people are being a bit stiff with you. Normally an easy conversationalist, your overtures stumble, you can’t seem to generate any momentum. You are never quite able to relax and enjoy yourself. By the end of the evening, you leave with relief, not certain why the occasion was so awkward.

Subsequent to the dinner, a friend who was also at the event explains. Your clothing was wrong - style, colour, vintage. Your tie too wide (or too narrow). Your laugh too loud (too high, too soft). Your hair an embarrassment. Your jokes out of fashion. You held your cutlery wrong, your taste in music was wrong, and the books you like to read? Well, everyone knows that type of book is out of fashion.

Your reaction? Well, can’t speak to yours, but mine is to dismiss the critics. (And perhaps to wonder how I ever got myself invited to such a gathering...) They have established an entirely arbitrary set of rules by which they judge whether someone is ‘in’ our ‘out’, whether a person is sufficiently ‘in the know’ to be part of the group. I do not judge myself by the style of my shirt or the music I listen to, nor will I allow myself to be constrained in such an ill-fitting social box. In short, they need not bother to exclude me; I want no part of their arbitrary judgmentalism. They can do the anatomically impossible.

Now, people do that sort of thing all the time, of course. Teenagers develop their own dialect, listen to certain music, wear certain clothes. Twenty-somethings watch certain television shows, dress a certain (different) way, laugh at the same type of jokes as other twenty-somethings.

Each age-group does it; each sub-group does it, down to the two women having coffee together two or three times a week. Each group has those things which identify them; it has those things which they delight to mock. Every time it’s done, its declared intent may be something noble - they're ‘expressing themselves’, ‘conversing intelligently’, ‘exploring ideas with like-minded people’ - but in fact the motivation at root is sheer adolescent clique-ishness. They desire nothing more than to identify and exclude outsiders. If you can mock them at the same time, even better!

The language snobbery of Fisk is nothing other than this. Even though I agree with him at a number of points, his argument overall simply wearies and annoys me. He knows which words and phrases are worthy, and which are to be vilified. He claims a standard by which he slots the words into their appointed category, but in fact, it’s totally arbitrary, merely a matter of his personal taste. Some words and phrases are acceptable, others aren’t, and if you don’t know which is which, you are a boor.

Pfft to Mr. Fisk.

Schott's Original Miscellany is a snapper up of unconsidered trifles. Its purpose is to gather the flotsam and jetsam of the conversational tide. Importantly, Schott's Original Miscellany makes very few claims to be exhaustive, authoritative, or even practical. It does, however, claim to be essential. It is, perhaps, possible to live one's life without Schott's Original Miscellany, but it seems a curious and brave thing to attempt.

What is Schott's Original Miscellany? For me, it's a gift from a friend, a lovely little hard-cover book, just a bit bigger than your palm, small enough to fit in a largish purse, just the right size to haul out and open at random. When you do so, you will certainly find something odd, something interesting, something to fascinate or raise eyebrows. "I didn't know that!"

Something that's not authoritative, exhaustive, nor even practical - yet which is essential. What's not to love?

Me, I love this book. Thanks, Bob.