The hidden sexism of preparing for babies

In preparation for the baby my wife and I have attended several classes. Last week we went to a class on breastfeeding. One commonality in all the classes was a couched (or overt) plea by the instructor to the expectant fathers to do more of the housework both toward the end of the pregnancy and after the baby has arrived in order to take that pressure off the mother (while she is finishing gestating and then is recovering and then is getting little sleep with feeding the newborn).

No duh.

Icona Pooped

Attention people who make commercials and promos: I don't care how much you love Icona Pop's "I Love It". No matter how catchy it is (and sure, it is), it ceased being effective BECAUSE YOU ALL USED IT.

(Samsung, Shoedazzle, the CW...)

Unless you were trying to turn me off about whatever your spot was promoting, in which case: Mission accomplished.

~

And if you thought it would be some way of getting me to link to the noted ads, you're really stupider than I thought.

Not that we needed further proof that I am old but...

Chris Rock has a good routine about how a father's only job is to keep his daughter "off the pole" (that is, to prevent her from becoming a stripper). Having unintentionally seen a few minutes of a new MTV reality show called BUCKWILD (yes, apparently in all caps like that), which appears to be a cross between Jackass (as they do stupid stunts) and Jersey Shore (in that it's a group of regulars getting drunk and hooking up)--two shows I only unintentionally saw bits of--but set somewhere in West Virginia, I have a new standard for parenting excellence: Having one's children not end up on a show like BUCKWILD.

At least strippers can claim to be doing it to put themselves through college.

For all the West Virginian parents whose young adult offspring are not on that show, please accept my sincere congratulations.

12/12/12: Finally, it's over

It happened first January 1, 2001, then again February 2, 2002, and throughout the first dozen years of this century we have endured something over and over one day each year, and that all comes to an end (until next century) today.

This twelfth day of the twelfth month of the year ending in the number twelve is here and people have their last opportunity in our lifetimes to make a big deal about this repetitive numeric triptych. Get it out of your system, folks, because whether you place any importance on days like 1-1-01, 2-2-02, etc., or not, I think we can all agree: We've had enough.

We need another 88 years for this to have any renewed novelty.

TV in the Olympics

Watching the Olympics on Sunday meant watching the women's marathon. For distance events like that there's a difference in how they're covered for television from swimming or track or any event held in a specific venue: the place where the athletes are performing also has motor vehicles on it, driving right near the athletes as they are competing.

I don't watch these distance races much, and I'm sure that the athletes get used to it, but it seems like running 26 miles is hard enough on its own without a motorcycle speeding along a few feet away with a guy on the back pointing a camera at you. The motorcycle in front of the pack spewing exhaust is probably unavoidable but it seems like that is hardly ideal for performing physically demanding feats. (Of course, that's probably no worse than how the air is in Beijing most of the time, but we digress.)

Two spaces after a period. Period.

While trying to find something unrelated I came across a piece from back in January composed by the Slate technology editor wherein he decried the use of two spaces after a period at the end of a sentence as "wrong!" He blathers on about how it bothers him when people think it proper and eventually gets around to some modicum of a supporting argument when he references how typographers apparently decided long ago to go with a single space, and mentions how much the use of two spaces appears to bother them. He mentions how with typewriters in the 20th century and their monospace typefaces the use of two spaces came into practice, but contends that when they changed to have typefaces that accommodated variable width characters it should have stopped.

He closes with an attempt at declaring the aesthetics of a single space as proving its worth; it's all arbitrary, he concedes, but we should go with the standards the professionals agree upon.

At no point does he make an effort to understand why those who prefer two spaces do so; in his mind it is a clear case of stupidity, and he arrogantly dismisses that there could be any justification for it in his tone throughout.

Right of way

Last Thursday morning, as I walked from the train station to the office in downtown L.A., I found myself in the crosswalk, heading north up Flower, crossing Wilshire. Flower is a southbound one-way street, so oncoming traffic is headed toward me, not with me. Anyway, I had the green light and the "walk" sign and strode out into the crosswalk (as I mentioned—it was just two sentences ago; surely you haven't forgotten) and a Jaguar (the auto, not the big cat) was in the lane to turn left on to Wilshire. It had moved about a third of the way into the intersection from the other side.

"Carmageddon": This is why the rest of the country makes fun of L.A.

This coming weekend here in the Los Angeles metropolitan area there will be the partial demolition of a bridge over a freeway. For this, a portion of a few miles of the freeway in question will be completely closed from Friday night through early Monday morning (see red rectangle below).

That seems like it would create some inconvenience for those who live or work or otherwise would travel that portion of the freeway during the weekend, but would otherwise be a minor issue, right?

Apparently you missed when I referenced this was "Los Angeles."

The revolution will not be DVRed

On the KTLA morning news program Wednesday the "tech guy" Rich DeMuro (the second person they've had in that slot) did a story about a family who records so many shows that they need three DVRs. (The specific mention during the piece of "our friends at AT&T U-verse" revealed it to be a not-really-veiled promo.) The tone seemed to be, Wow, look at this mother and daughter who really like watching TV, rather than, Egad, check out these freaks who haven't figured out how to delete programs from the queue after watching them.

My wife and I have had two DVRs for several years (one for the TV in the living room, one for the TV in the bedroom). (I wrote about the glory of DVRs in this post over a year and a half ago.) Much of that time both were generally over 75% full (and occasionally over 90% full)—and each held 100 hours worth—because of all the shows and movies recorded. When we got a HD flat-screen TV last November we also got a new HD DVR unit and that one got filled within months.

Movie phone

When visiting the local Cineplex to see a movie, prior to the feature presentation there's generally a message asking the patrons to please refrain from talking during the show. That the public needed to be instructed it was inconsiderate to talk during the movie was somewhat disheartening to those of us who knew that already, but the fact the theater made the effort was appreciated. Didn't always work, but it did seem to help.

In recent years the message has included an admonishment against texting, presumably because the idiots who would be inclined to talk but weren't doing so transferred that same lack of paying attention to the screen to the admittedly quiet activity of sending text messages on their phones, but they failed to grasp their phones were a bright spot of light in an otherwise dark room and thus it was still distracting to others, and thus they needed to be told it was.

And that has helped make the theater-going experience better. Any time I see a movie without people talking or using their phones while the movie plays I am sincerely happy. However, if I may, I'd like to ask for just a tiny bit more from the other theater goers: Please do not turn on your phone until the lights actually come up, or until you've left the theater.

Water Cooler Daze

An "All Things Considered" piece wondered in the era of myriad media outlets, where the most popular TV shows pull in ratings dwarfed by those of shows 30 years ago, and pop stars sell a fraction of the number of albums that made the top of the charts 15 years ago, whether there could really be any true "water cooler" topics any more, where the proverbial everyone is talking about the same pop culture reference like there was in those days of yore (which, apparently, is construed as the time when I was in my teens).

I found myself thinking: Was there every truly this halcyon time for ubiquitous topics of conversation, or is there merely this perception it existed? Back in the day when a really popular show got 30 million views, that was impressive, certainly, but in a country of well over 200 million that's less than 15% of all people actually participating in watching, much less discussing it during their coffee breaks. So, to consider that to be "everyone" is merely actively ignoring all those who are ignoring what you are regarding.

Thinking about gift cards

With some major holiday coming up where there's bound to be a lot of gifts given by people who don't really know what the recipients would want a likely way that situation will be handled will involve the purchase and distribution of gift cards. Now, let's commence this with the requisite acknowledgment that any effort made to give a gift is laudable; by no means should any lack of gratitude by inferred, as none is implied. However, as the saying goes, it's the thought that counts, and there's a certain level where gift cards don't seem to connote much thought by the giver.

There's plenty of catches to using gift cards that the banks and issuers of the cards hid in the fine print—not the least of which tends to be fees that deduct from the amount available on the card if it's not used within a certain window of time—but that is getting unnecessarily nit-picky about this. After receiving and using—or, perhaps I should say, attempting to use—a number of gift cards over the years, I can distill the problems with them down to two obvious problems.

Don't make me fail to refudiate Seth Myers, Oxford

The Oxford American Dictionary made its word of the year Sarah Palin's typographical error "refudiate".

That was mocked during Weekend Update this past Saturday in a piece Seth Myers called "Come On, Dictionary". He duly noted how risible it was at the time of creation even Palin admitted it was a flubbed amalgamation of "refute" and "repudiate" but later she pulled the best way to cover a mistake: claim it was clever, like how Shakespeare came up with new words. However, comparisons to the Bard aside, and faux pas or not, as Myers stated in his quasi-rant, to take two words that not only start the same but mean similar things and switch one of the letters in the one with one of the letters in the other to make a new third word that means essentially the same as the first two did does not make for a worthwhile addition to the lexicon.

But that's not what this is about.

Hooray! Sanity is Over!

We've reached the end of the first week of November, and one of the best things about this time is: The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear is over, and now the subset of those who were commenting on that can stop talking about it. As with the election, we may have a bit more time putting up with some post-game stuff, but soon any interest as a general topic will expire.

Thank goodness.

The election was politics. The rally was not (as I mentioned it would not be a month ago). Jon Stewart stated that emphatically many, many times. However, those who were so fascinated by the rally clearly could not accept that, presumably because they need to project on to it what they wanted it to be—namely, a rally for their agenda. I'm not so oblivious that I don't grasp that the somewhat amorphous mission statement of the rally allows those who seek a more definitive message to impose their more definitive message on to it (in their minds).

Air-ported

When people enter an airport they are funneled through a structured area as they go through the security checkpoint; the queue of humans is cordoned off with stanchions and employees keeping things relatively organized.

Then those same people get to the gate for their flight, and the onus to maintain order is left up to those same people who couldn't be trusted minutes earlier. The waiting area by the gate has a counter behind which the employees make announcements about which group gets to board, and there's a bunch of chairs where the pending passengers sit. Beyond that, there's no structure imposed on the space, so when the staff starts announcing who gets to board, people coming from multiple directions to that point of entry at the gate have to queue up with nothing but the patience of some and the pushiness of others to guide them.

Yahoo!, I give up

Last month I offered this post about a blurb on the Yahoo! home page where they didn't seem to grasp what "ironic" meant.

Today there was this front-page story regarding the Miss Universe pageant:

Zooming in you can see the final link noting the response of Miss Philippines that may have cost her the crown as being "ironic":

That link takes you to their recurrent web series, Prime Time in No Time, a snarky recap of the previous night's TV. In that video we see her answer to the question (from judge Billy Baldwin--seriously) where she claims to never have made a "major, major" mistake in her life (and it's speculated that is where the judges turned on her)

Note that In the actual content there's no allusion to that potentially ruinous remark as being "ironic"; it's only in that blurb on the home page that the term is employed.

So, fine, Yahoo! front page blurb writer: You win. "Ironic" is now beyond how the Alanis Morissette song would have it be defined; it is whatever you need it to mean. "Blithely stupid"? "Hideously off-putting"? Sure, why not?

Your persistence has worn me down past the point of caring. Heck, let's call that ironic. My astonishment that the Miss Universe pageant still exists? Ironic! That I continue to visit your site? Let's call that tragically ironic.

Take him out OF the movies

Over the weekend I saw a movie on cable: New York, I Love You (it was a case where the wife started watching and I was there with her). It's a series of vignettes about fictional New Yorkers (each written, directed, and shot by different crews); some intertwine slightly but overall there just small scenes strung together. I'm not sure how impressed I would have been with that regardless of the cast, but right out of the gate it opens with a story that features Andy Garcia, Rachel Bilson, and… Hayden Christensen (a.k.a., He Who Ruins Any Movie He's In Because He's So Abysmal). The specifics of the scene are unimportant for this (although the vast difference in levels of talent when he acts opposite Garcia is flabbergasting).

Suffice it to say, I could not recommend the movie.

Thinking of Prop 8 and its consistent inconsistency

In the Perry v. Schwarzenegger trial where closing arguments occurred a while ago, the supporters of Proposition 8 were trying to nullify the 18,000 same-sex marriages that were performed in the period between when they were declared legal and the passage of Proposition 8 (and upheld as legal even after that). Apparently that there are any married couples who are homosexuals—well, homosexuals who are married to each other—is too abhorrent for that ever-so-slight majority who voted to ban such unions, and those behind it feel compelled to go about negating (from a legal standpoint) that which was done.

I've made it very clear that I opposed Proposition 8, voted against it, and think it abhorrent that there's people who would go to such lengths to deny a group of Americans the same right that others have. And I think this latest salvo to negate existing marriages is absolutely a dick move. However, begrudgingly I can admit there's a certain internal consistency to it. If the law is that only those of different sex can be legally married then that's the law until such time as the law is changed or overturned.

Again, I'm not suggesting I agree with this attempt to take away these 18,000, but it is tricky to justify a situation where marriage ends up being a matter of getting there first.

Allow me to interject here, so we're all clear: Proposition 8 cannot be overturned fast enough in my book.

But I'm pretty sure that everybody already has an opinion on that topic, so now I'm just going to take this a prompt to ranterate (rant and ruminate) on the general notion.

~

If someone came along and told me that my marriage to my wife was no longer recognized by the state because a group of bigots got together and reinstated laws where only persons who were of the same race could be legally married... let's just say: I would not take it lying down.

Trumping 'America: A Story of Us'

Recently I finally finished watching the America: The Story of Us series that I'd recorded from the History Channel. As noted in this post a few weeks back in the episode about the Civil War there was an allusion to Twitter (as an analogy for the telegraph) that struck me as a particularly noteworthy lowlight. At the time I suggested I might continue just to see if in the latter episodes they might top (so to speak) that.

So? Did they?

There were some moments in their summaries of the last 145 years, but the nearest contender for that specious honor came with about 10 minutes left in the concluding episode. Not surprisingly, it involved more of the nigh-insufferable interview footage with Mr. "You're Fired" himself, Donald Trump.

The topic was the resiliency of Americans in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. First Rudy Giuliani talked about how the terrorists didn't kill our spirit, then Soledad O'Brien talked about how people became polite to one another presumably having been reminded of the fragility of life, Vera Wang talked about how America came back to New York and helped by spending money. So the bar was already not that high.

Then "The Donald" appeared on screen and uttered the following: "We were able to do something so quickly, so expeditiously, in terms of getting back to order after the travesty of the World Trade Center when it came tumbling down. To have done that so quickly is amazing."

I rewound and listened to it again and again, just to be sure I heard him correctly, to verify he didn't say "tragedy." I suspect that even though that's probably what he meant the word "travesty" is what came out of his mouth.

Travesty, as in to make a mockery of something.

I can't claim to know the ultimate motives of the terrorists who orchestrated the plane hijacks, but in the intervening years when I've pondered that topic never had it occurred to be they were operating on some kind of cruelly satirical level.

Out of bounds in the inbox

Professional decorum needs to change in the following scenario:  If someone at work replies to an email with a response that clearly indicates that person did not actually read the message, it should be perfectly acceptable, and even expected, for the original sender to send back: "Read what I wrote the first time, dumb ass."

We're losing too many hours of productivity having to find clever, unoffensive ways of rephrasing what was composed originally in an effort to avoid making the unobservant and attention-deficient feel as though they are unobservant and attention-deficient. Being nice is not working, and insults may not make these people any better, but clearly the only hope left is to allow those whose text gets ignored to have some outlet for venting. But ostensible professionalism prevents even that, so it's a lose-lose.

If it's good enough for the blogosphere, isn't it time to be good enough for the office?

~

Happy Springtime, everybody.