All the better to eat you with, my dear…
[image shared by James Brooks on flickr.]
Please feel free to use this thread to natter about anything your heart desires. Is there anything great happening in your life? Anything you want to get off your chest? Reading a good book (or a bad one)? Anything in the news that you’d like to discuss? What have you created lately? Commiserations, felicitations, temptations, contemplations, speculations?
Categories: Life
Soggy here, innit? 
In memoriam: Diana Rigg 
Getting out the ‘yes’ 
100 books by women in 2016 
Hoyden About Town 
As I shared last night on last week’s open thread, my oven haz a borked – no roast dinners this weekend 😦
In TV news, Charlie Sheen is still awful.
tigtog: one of the reasons we got a barbecue with a hood is so that we can still roast/bake after the Apocalypse. At least for a little while.
Pot roast?
My whole little family is going to see Brave together this afternoon, which I’m really looking forward to because the wee fella has only recently become big enough to sit through a movie in the theatre. In keeping with this Heina at Skepchick has put up a great analysis of what this film says about the, sad but very legitimate, motives mothers might have for policing their daughters’ gender presentation.
Utterly revolted at this. Channel Nine should be ashamed. But of course they won’t be.
(Long time lurker, first time poster – hello Hoydens!)
I just (triumphantly) got out of my soul-sucking cold calling job and into a better customer service job with a less questionable employer, but I’m distracted by the foolery that is a private number for a health service’s surgical op scheduling office.
I can’t call them back and the hospital had no idea where to direct me. No clue abut my file at all, actually.
Also, when someone tells you they can’t make the appointed date you just dropped on them and asks you directly if you have something later, “we’re just scheduling it” (IIRC) is a meaningless sentence, even when repeated.
Luckily for me, my surgery is far from urgent, but the blase way they casually mentioned that I’d simply need to take a week or so off work after the outpatient clinic op was galling.
/rant
Hey, Schmeedle! Welcome! I do enjoy (by enjoy, I mean abhor) the weasly way the new Hackett standard of top blokiness goes a little like this:
Not physically assaulting your partner and children = “not hurting them”.
Not having another similar incident on record = never having used his size or anger to scare or intimidate, never having less-than-healthy ways of expressing anger.
Just because he hasn’t trashed his house before, doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a temper that affects his relationship with his loved ones.
Also, I saw a clip where he was asked point blank about targeting his wife’s prized possession* on the night in question. He wheedled out of it when unable to deny it, mumbling something about it being an argument within his family about his relationship.
*Candice Alley is a musician. He flipped her piano over.
I have two weeks off work!!!
I’m very happy about this, in case you can’t tell 😀
I’ve just driven my Dad and my sister to the Gold coast to fly overseas for six weeks… Lucky them! I, meanwhile, am moving houses this month and catching up on exams I missed because I was sick. See the contrast here?
Orlando, I’m also going to go see Brave this week – let me know what it’s like! (But seriously, girl in dress with bow on horse in prehistory? Cannot be anything other than awesome.)
Welcome, Schmeedle, and in response to both your and tigtog’s links: EWW.
Oh lordy me, I swear I could feel the vibrations of mother-daughter relationships healing all over the English-speaking world. I can’t imagine how some critics have come out lukewarm about it, I was utterly beguiled. It makes a neat counterpoint to Nemo: mother and daughter learn to get where each other is coming from through being thrust together, rather than separated.
I’m really looking forward to Brave. I think I might take myself off to see it on Tuesday morning…
I woke up this morning and saw that the world has not been torn asunder by the apocalypse.
Heh, guess all that fearmongering about the end of the world because of the carbon tax was wrong. Who would have thought?
As some Hoydens have reason to remember, my jaw is pretty sore tonight. My son upper-cut me with his hard toddler head. Yow.
Mary, I had a feeling that might be the case, but was hoping you might escape the worst. 😦
How’s your eye? (The other toddler over-excited impact moment)
BTW, apropos of blog dramas elsewhere, there is a certain contingent who is vewwy upset that some bloggers might just ban their arses as soon as they appear, on the basis of their misbehaviour seen on somebody else’s blog (rather than waiting for said contingent to fully display their arsitude undeniably on previously unsullied blogs). Oh the hoomaaaaaaaaanity.
Seriously, they’re co-opting the vocabulary of anti-bullying campaigns to frame themselves as victims of bullying when they’re simply being called out/challenged/disagreed with for their stances against social justice. This makes me feel rather stompy.
Well, I had a lovely time in Perth this weekend, where it was 21 degrees and sunny! I explored the city and the art gallery, which is truly excellent. And, I took a boat down the Swan river to Fremantle (dolphins!!) and saw the markets and the jail. I also ate lots of nice food and drank too much wine, so no complaints here. Thanks all for the suggestions!
At long last I have a working modem! My old one finally fried its brains (right when the Victorian earthquake struck … hmm) and Telstra came good and sent me a new one.
Then they sent me a second one. ::rolls eyes::
Productive weekend putting photo-pastiches together on PhotoStudio. Very pleasing!
Tigtog – “arsitude” – love it, did you invent that word?
Not really, I just ockerised “assitude”, which has been around on US blogs for a while (more directly relates to seed word “attitude”, obvsly)
Sounds better than assitude. Whenever I see ‘ass’ I wonder what donkeys have got to do with anything. 🙂
Then of course there’s cattitude, which is a whole different kettle of kitty dins!
I’m right next to you, supporting you, tigtog.
Back on alt.polyamory, the resident sexual harasser got very offended when new women to the newsgroup told him where to go, based on practically every woman in the newsgroup objecting to his behaviour. No, somehow, it was each woman’s duty to subject herself to the exact same thing and personally confirm that he was still sexually harassing.
So,, if it’s not in the Feminism 101 FAQ, maybe we need some entry on how yes, people will judge you based on your behaviour, and they do not need to have personally interacted with you to form their opinion, thanks to the glories of the Internet. We can find out how you’ve behaved elsewhere, and if we’re women, we might pay special attention to how you’ve treated other women. Your own words may condemn you, no conspiracy of secret emailing is required.
For me, personally, when someone mainly attacks women and not men discussing the exact same issue (as seen all over Freethought Blogs recently – PZ Myers, Lousy Canuck, and Greg Laden at least all made contributions that would have gotten them rape threats if they were differently gendered than they are), that’s a huge warning bell. Vice versa, when they only address comments made by men.
Heya,
mostly long-time reader, tweet follower, sometime commenter 😉
I agree, I was so completely disgusted by that whole Grant Hackett thing 😦 he was all ‘oh, poor me.. we had an argument’.. I’m sorry – a trashed house is the biggest tantrum ever, not an argument, nor is it non-violent – it’s the biggest demonstration of power and violence he could have given. 😦 ok, all stuff you’ve said, sorry!!
In other news.. I quit my (awful) job recently, and have spent a week unemployed, but am going to be working for a family café and running my own business doing catering, cakes and pastries and yumminess 🙂
shameless plug.. if you’re interested, my new blog is http://www.rainbowbakes.com.
Tigtog..I’ve been meaning to write you a post, but my life has been hectic, sorry!
Also.. my sister is making someone a ‘boob’cake. does anyone else find this problematic, or am I being a wowser?
Well, if you’re a wowser, so am I. The idea of it (I’ve never heard of them before) just gives me the creeps.
yeah.. i didn’t think much of it at first, then realised she was pretty much being asked to make headless pair of boobs 😐 i asked her if she had a problem with it, and she didn’t, but for me, it just harked back to that Swedish cake a few months ago..
I’m reading this without context or background, so it’s very much a case of the cake in isolation – and that’s the thing, too: a pair of breasts in isolation. Which is where the yuck factor hits me.
It depends on the context. I can totally see someone having a boob cake at, say, a party to celebrate the end of a breast-cancer-treatment-and-reconstruction party. Or possibly even something like a weaning celebration/commemoration.
Good point, I hadn’t thought of that!
well that’s the thing.. it’s none of those things (which, by the way, would be cool!) it’s a birthday cake for two people.
I don’t really have context either, she was just asked to do it for a friend of a friend or something, cos they know she loves to bake. Am just really weirded out by it. Apparently people do this stuff all the time (she found templates on the web).
Boob cakes… kinda creepy.
I just had an amazing email from a writer at CLEO who found my blog and wants to interview me for a feature on asexuality! I am terribly excited, and slightly nervous. But I am definitely going to do it!
Congrats on the approach from Cleo, Jo. Good luck with the interview.
Enjoyed my first day of unemployment after the past few months’ contract work, yesterday. Working on sorting out the last of the post-moving mess that got neglected in light of work and hospital.
Taking the Tiny Tyrant to be inoculated this morn and not looking forward to it as he seems to have inherited his mother’s anxious personality (and random generally not wholly pleasant surprises are not my style of parenting so he knows it’s coming. This was so much easier when he was too young to have any anticipation).
There is SO MUCH work in this city! So not feeling too concerned about my employment prospects. It’s such a change from the (extremely high levels of unemployment in the) city we used to inhabit.
I made my daughter a boob cake for her first birthday! Started out with a Rum Baba / Bundt cake tin and went from there. I knew you often made birthday cakes based on what the kid was into at the time so that was the thinking 😀
I have a photo somewhere but sadly, not digitised!
I noticed a person who used to comment quite a bit on my blog, getting VERY nasty over at another place so I’ve put him in automod even though he doesn’t comment at the moment. Didn’t realise how nasty he could get. He also made a comment (in general talking-about-feminists mode) which the blog owner subsequently deleted: “CIB blogger is equal parts brilliant and obnoxious”. Er, thanks… I think. ?!
Mary, I remember well the overexcited toddler boffo… Ouch.
W00t!
Wow! Brilliant!
I saw Diana Rigg here years ago, when The Hollow Crown toured. Seeing her, Derek Jacobi, Ian Richardson and Donald Sinden on stage was quite something.
Love the thought of her in Doctor Who … wouldn’t it be something if she played the Doctor!
Helen, I noticed that particular comment too. His previous history of similar comments here and elsewhere is why he was perma-moderated years ago, despite the fact that he’s mostly perspicacious/reasonable – the jabs come with no warning.
Congrats on the Cleo thing, Jo, very exciting! 🙂 Good luck!
Hope the innoculation went well this morning, Aphie. Eep, doesn’t sound like fun 😦
And Helen, I love the idea of a boob cake for a 1 year old’s birthday 😀 lol clever
orlando, I want to take my children to Brave and they can sit still that log. However, one review I read suggested it was too scary for anyone under 8. How did you find it?
In more TV news, Aaron Sorkin is kinda awful.
I can report that my nine year old, who previously has only ever been scared by Coraline and by The End of the World (second Ninth Doctor episode), can home really quite frightened by one part of Brave. He’s quite happily watched heaps of Buffy, Terminator, etc, (we’re even soon to tackle Aliens) but Brave shook him up.
Oh my. In that case, I think not for us yet.
Was it the willow-the-wisps? My four-year-old had a bit of a wobble at the willow-the-wisps, and watched the rest from our laps. But having said that, he was completely riveted from start to finish, and busy making spells and being a bear all the way home, so I don’t think it was the *bad* kind of scared.
orlando, is that what the movie calls them, or is that your own coining? Isn’t it traditionally will o’ the wisp?
Either way I totally want to see how the willow is incorporated into the older tradition.
In other movie news, how much do I ♥ the casting of Andrew Garfield in the Spiderman reboot? I never quite bought that Toby Maguire could have been bullied at school (a crucial part of Peter Parker’s background psyche) but with Garfield I buy that totally.
Funny! No, of course you’re right. I was just typing without really thinking and had a phonetic moment.
Although one of the legends about willows is that they uproot themselves at night and stalk, muttering, after travellers, which would have worked well in the film somewhere.
Tamara @ 37 – I think it depends very much on the child. My 4 year old loved Brave (also likes Coraline though). Fortunately has not yet asked for a bow as she’s dangerous enough as it is with her toy swords.
Agreed – all kids have different things that scare them. My comment wasn’t a “don’t do it”, it was just “approach with care”.
Tamara @37 I found my child’s reactions to “scary”stuff in movies quite unpredictable – he is unconcerned about superhero stuff, explosions, zombies etc, but was too frightened to finish watching Meet the Robinsons because of the theme of the baby being left at the orphanage (even though that’s where he starts the movie, and he finds a great family by the end) purely because of the scene where the mother places the baby in basket at the door and rings the bell and leaves.
Lauredhel @ 47 – oh yes, agreed. And age is not a particularly good predictor either as from what I’ve seen kids seem to get more afraid as they get older and understand more of what is going on and then progressively less afraid again. And only their parents really know what stage they’re up to.
Thanks for your help everyone. I think we will pass, I have noticed she does get frightened easily, she’s quite a thinker.
I remember I saw Chitty Chitty Bang Bang at the same age and found the child thief so scary I had to leave the cinema.