If you still agree with the war in Iraq Please read this.

And this. It's out of control. We are out of control in war. Why can't we stop this?

word Tracey is brilliant.

I'm even watching TV right now, as I blog. Yeah, I'm one of those, except I'm not a dude. But I'm watching Godfather II, which is a great fucking movie. My child is also waking up asking for toast. Have some toast, kid, and fuck the perfect parenting.

another day, another slag from the Times "Why do people publish this stuff?" Charles McGrath wonders in this article about the sudden glut of personal-narrative anthologies.

Wait, wait! I know this one. I remember this question from David Hochman's article about "mommybloggers" (those "online shrines to parental self-absorption") and the momoir debacle. It's because we're shameless narcissists and we can't shut up, right?

I choked on my regular-flavor nicotine gum when McGrath told me "Essayists are typically paid a flat fee of $1,000 to $1,500" or "much less than a dollar a word." That means I'm owed about $3800 for my contributions to four anthologies. Cough it up, you bastards!

Why do people publish this "stuff"? If we're making less than that dollar per word (and of course if you aren't you are not a Significant Writer worthy of the Times's consideration), we must have some compulsion to self-explicate or to tag along with the "name writers" on board.

Maybe it's just this simple: maybe we write for the same reason McGrath does--because we have something to share and we practice the writer's craft. Maybe we have actual ideas about the topic (I've written on raising a son, travel, and friendship) we wish to express to readers. Maybe we're just human beings and we like to communicate. Maybe we like to reflect on our lives in print. Maybe we want a line on a CV, a publishing credit. Maybe the field of "name writers" is so narrow, thanks to publishers' paid promotion and Oprah's Book Club, that we welcome the opportunity to partake in the process of creating and distributing literature in whatever ways are available to us. Maybe if you actually read us instead of dismissing an entire genre out of hand, we are actually competent essayists.

The problem isn't that anthologies exist. The problem is that major corporate publishers have begun producing them, thus requiring the Times to acknowledge them. Some of them actually sell, too. Imagine. A marginal publishing segment becomes mainstream enough to attract the attention of the Times, and the Times is sniffily offended. Quelle surprise! You know, it's a lot like when all those "bloggers" got book deals or when those mothers got all uppity. Don't you non-name writers know your place? Please return to your scrapbooking and chardonnay and let us tell you what literature is. You may now read Zadie Smith.

Nota bene: If you are a man (please note the misogynist flavor of the McGrath piece) and a "name writer," the Times will give you a pass and excerpt you, even if your shallow self-absorption is considerably more patent.

Pregnant Woman Glows with Rage From the Onion.

a moth with nothing to eat The four-year-old is extremely dramatic. The two-year-old and the three-year-old seem dramatic to the unschooled eye, but actually they're just impulsive, whereas the four-year-old is developing a more fantastic imagination and thus understands rudimentary dramaturgy.

I did something to my kid--I probably asked him to please use a fork or refused to carry him from one side of the room to the other--and he flung a curse at me: "You are a moth with nothing to eat! You have nothing to eat but sausage, and that is why I call you a moth!"

I keep Post-Its handy for moments like that.

All hail Spec's We're getting a Spec's in Austin. Get me my keys!

If you have ever been in Houston for longer than half an hour, you probably know Spec's. Spec's is not a liquor store. No, no. It is a liquor warehouse. We're Houstonians, and we like things to be as excessive as possible! We like our strippers built like Anna Nicole Smith, and our corporate executives will plunder your 401K like the meanest mothers on planet Earth! We need a liquor warehouse to satiate our need for stadium retail!

On the other hand, it's hard to deny the lure of a dozen different kinds of grappa. Twenty kind of fois gras. Scharffen Berger in bulk. There's some good shit at Spec's. When you're 21 in Houston you go to Spec's just to look at the good shit, like it's the Food and Wine and Spirits Zoo. Don't get me started on the cheeses.

In a clothes swap I once obtained (and still have) a yellow polyester Spec's employee shirt. Big old Spec's rabbit on the back. Shortly after I moved to Boston I went to get my books for class, and I happened to be wearing my Spec's shirt. There was a bouncer at the bookstore who was giving people and their backpacks the utter total look of bouncer death until he saw my Spec's shirt.

"Are you from Houston?" he pointed. I told him I was and he clapped me on the back, which was a little scary because he was a big guy and I am a small woman, and I was already wearing a backpack. But the Spec's shirt makes friends, people.

So everybody's all pissed off about this invasion from without, and I should mention that I always appreciate the selection and helpful service at Grapevine Market whenever I need liquor and boutique olives, which is almost absolutely never in this phase of my life, although I did get a bottle of vodka last year so I could make an herbal tincture--and that is the very definition of squaredom. But at Spec's it's always 1993, which was my documented Party Apex. You walk into Spec's and you are a Party Person. There is nothing practical at Spec's. There are twenty kinds of fois gras at Spec's, and your proximity to them in a retail setting makes you a Sexier and More Carefree Person. They don't sell Children's Motrin and toilet plungers at Spec's. You will not find a replacement filter for your air conditioner or additive-free laundry detergent. You will find esoteric olives, hoity-toity foodie food, booze, and cigars. You can be upmarket or downmarket. And of course those things are all you need at your Party Apex.

And you're going to need a warehouse.

Smelling-Nose Boy I am anosmic.

I can't smell farts or burps, dirty diapers, leaking gas, rain, or celebrity perfumes. I can't smell cat pee. I am always tasked with changing Baldokitty's giant freakin' litter box, even though I am perpetually pre-pregnant according to the CDC. I can't even smell pie.

A cursory Google (everything I do on Tuesday is dependent on Baldo's continuing interest in Daniel Cook) led me to this essay by Lucy Mangan.

Since Baldo was born we've been watching him carefully for signs of anosmia without actually saying anything out loud, lest people think we're idiots. (Approximately 37% of the people I tell about my inability to smell don't believe me, and I have to do an Anosmic Parlor Trick, like sticking a peeled close of garlic up my nose. Which is no big deal because after you've had pinworms in the house, a person will stick peeled cloves of garlic in various places. Apparently my Butt Garlic reeked up a room, but it didn't bother me any, being anosmic.) The good news is that Baldo can smell.

The even better news is that I can deploy him like a service animal. "Here, smell this," I'm always saying. After our power was out for two days, we sat down with our leftovers and sorted them. When we go shopping, he smells the cantaloupes and helps me choose. If only I'd had him with me in my Chemistry Appreciation class (for non-majors, naturally), when I had to report on the odors of various reactions and seriously considered filing a grievance with the ADA.

I have never met another anosmic person. It's always somebody's girlfriend or brother who can't smell. But I met another Marrit recently, so hope springs eternal.

boobies under fire! Another day, another round of lactation hysteria. Furiously making the rounds of the mamasphere is an all-points bulletin about a LiveJournal user whose account will be suspended by the company if she doesn't remove her default userpic, which shows a baby nursing, because it violates the obscenity clause in the TOS. Helen Lovejoy sez, "What about the children?" Apparently an unclothed breast (with visible nipple or areola) is verboten on LJ, although nursing in public is allowed (and in fact legally protected), whereas the same cannot be said for some of the truly frightening things I've seen on LJ. ProMoM has more.

Elsewhere, Round Rock Express GM Dave Kendrick got schooled on a mother's right to breastfeed while watching the team play the Omaha Royals.

The Brangelina baby and you! "Prolonged exposure to the Brangelina baby will make your child go blind."

It's a Girl Right now I'm reading It's a Girl, the companion piece to Andi Buchanan's It's a Boy anthology. I had to put aside The Bullet Trick to do it, and as much as I want to find out what William did in Berlin, I'm not sorry.

I'll never have a daughter--not unless one mysteriously shows up on my doorstep in a basket--but It's a Girl is a comprehensive look at the experience. Leslie Leyland Fields's essay about teaching her daughter to fish for salmon is a knockout; I skipped to the back to read it. Miriam Peskowitz writes about her daughter's cheerleading fetish with good humor and insight, and Ann Douglas's essay about discovering her daughter's bulimia is harrowing and kind at once. Many of the authors so far relate their daughters' femininity to their own (Jenny Block is completely unapologetic about her plastic surgery in "On Being Barbie"). I like Yvonne Latty's punchy style, which belies the myth that mother-writing is flowery and shallow. (Of all the experiences people can have on Earth, we know motherhood is perhaps the least shallow.)

I can't wait to read more, but you know how that goes, right?

NSFW Tom Cruise and Photoshop.

Mom, don't look. You don't want to see.

Go make music. This is the Biscuit Brothers show.

I will talk about the Biscuit Brothers to anyone who will listen. So if you don't want to hear about the Biscuit Brothers, clicky somewhere else. Thanks.

One of the other moms at Baldo's preschool slipped me a stack of Tivo'd (Tivoed?) DVDs without comment one morning. I thought there might be some kind of interesting contraband hidden in there, that's how far on the DL it was. Alas, there was only a funny, good-quality television show for children made independently by people in Austin.

The Biscuit Brothers is made for you and me by people who love music and want to share it. Like so many other artists doing important work, their operating budget comes out of their own pockets, at least for now. PBS runs the show (and syndicates it to other markets in the U.S.) for free.

I'm a snarky parent and a film critic, so I figure I might be the toughest possible audience. But I love this show, and I want there to be a second season, and a third season, and a fourth season, until Tiny Scarecrow is worn at the seams. Perhaps you will like it too. I hope you will, and I hope you will go make music.

mothers in management Another day, another set of bizarre and contradictory generalizations about mothers in the paid workforce.

Some highlights:

1. Once again, fatherhood is irrelevant, although the author admits, "Some women and men interviewed said they found the topic of mothers vs. non-mothers a double standard, because men are not similarly scrutinized for fatherhood."


2. Motherhood is great when it benefits the organization ("E-Trade CEO Mitch Caplan, whose children are 16, 18 and 21, says mothers are "absolutely" superior at managing time and prioritizing") but of course there's always the mom "missing a business flight to Hawaii because she overslept after staying up late making a Halloween costume for her 6-year-old." (No word yet on whether people without children ever miss business flights or other professional engagements.)


3. Guy talking about "bad mothers who produce pathology in their kids"? Check.

mother's day I got love for the mamasphere. I also got a cupcake and lip gloss, so it's a pretty good day even if my hanging laundry got rained on.

Sheila came to visit on Friday. Baldo's school had a mother's day program--three songs and a present of bath salts made at art time--and we totally plotzed.

Baldo wants to know when Kids' Day is. Naturally Kids' Day must fall on Charon, the eighth day of the week. (Your calendar may not show Charon, but it totally exists if your kid says so, and you must speak of it forevermore as real.) By the way, Charon is tomorrow, so don't forget.

Also of note: I'm excited about crazy mama Adrienne Martini's new book.

If you're here because of AustinMama Welcome.

I've gotten a lot of angry feedback about this piece. Some positive feedback too, from the likes of Andi Buchanan, Miriam Peskowitz, Spike Gillespie, and Martha Brockenbrough, all small-market writers who deal in the topic of parenthood and culture. If you haven't read them, you should.

For the record I'm angry on behalf of other writers--women writers, mostly--whose works have been marginalized by the literary firmament but whose ideas have been embraced when penned by a man. I've never stapled a zine, but I admire people who have. I admire people who put their words out into the world because they believe in them, even if they're not being compensated or being paid in $50 and copies.

Readers of the column have confused my words with quotations from the piece. (One from Ayun Halliday, who's far smarter than I am.) I've been accused of being unpublished and jealous. Jealous, maybe, but I'm not unpublished. I've been told I'm "too cool" to accept a paying writing job. I have several. You'll find them listed at the bottom of the piece in my bio. I've been accused of being a fan of Ayelet Waldman. When did I say that? But really I'm annoyed. Pollack himself says, "Only recently did I realize that my experiences (and my wife's) were part of a much larger social movement that has been brewing for a decade or more." When you write a book proposal, you should include a section on similar titles. Look hard and you'll find great works about keeping your soul while you parent, like Andi Buchanan's Mother Shock, Ariel Gore's The Mother Trip, and Ayun Halliday's The Big Rumpus. (All are published by the small feminist Seal Press, who also published my book, Inconsolable.) Or maybe you'd like Marion Winik's The Lunch-Box Chronicles, or Spike's Surrender (But Don't Give Yourself Away)--UT Press, that one. Out there for years, all of them. All written by women. All ignored by everyone except the readers who loved them, who passed them around at playgroup, who bought copies for friends. But like I say, you have to look hard.

I don't blame the Pollacks for not knowing these books existed. The market has made them as invisible as can be while keeping them in print. Go to the parenting section of Barnes & Noble and find a mothering book not written by Vicki Iovine or Jenny McCarthy, if you can. Although I still stand by my statement that you need to make an effort to find out what other writers are doing before you publish a book about the same topic.

teh fluffy I approve of Kate Middleton, but what in the name of Charles Nelson Reilly is that thing on her head? Animal? Vegetable? How does she keep it out of her eyes?

and again New column is up.

alt.usenet.thomas-slashfic No doubt the late Reverend W. Awdry did not intend his train stories to be hot gay porn, but they are if read properly. You don't even have to get into the Freudian vicissitudes of the trains, tunnels, and mines, nor the groveling to please the railway's father figure, who metes out punishments and rewards.

Witness these stories from the Thomas and His Friends Collection--"a unique collection of engine stories from The Railway Series"--which we were unlucky enough to obtain recently at Half Price:

• "Percy and the Trousers"


• "Duck Takes Charge"


• "Wooly Bear"


• "Paint Pots and Queens" (my favorite)


• "Gordon Goes Foreign"


• "Double Header" (ouch!)


• "Dirty Objects"


• "Toby and the Stout Gentleman"

"'Well, little Thomas," chuckled Gordon as he passed, "now you know what hard work means, don't you?'

Poor Thomas couldn't answer; he had no breath. He just puffed slowly away to rest, and had a long, long drink.

He went home very slowly and was careful afterwards never to be cheeky to Gordon again."

J'adore Aural Times.

What a Mom Wants I'm on the e-mail list for a chichi boutique--really, I don't know why--and I can tell from their Mother's Day Boutique that they are really, really in tune with me.

Don't you also want

• a $60 cotton shirt "as seen on Terri [sic] Hatcher"
• a four-pack of "one-size-fits-all" nylon thongs (Monistat sold separately)--$60 and only in brown
• a $650 leather carryall that gives you "any excuse to take a long weekend getaway"
• $108 chenille track pants ("...by the pool, in the coffee shop, at brunch at Schiller's Liquor Store...You won't be able to take them off!")
• and a $55 umbrella you will lose in fifteen minutes?

No. You don't. You want what I want: six hours of uninterrupted sleep in my very own bed. And that's fucking it. Although I do like the idea of chenille pants because I never seem to have a towel handy.

his mother's child My son, age four, has written his first letter to the editor.

This is to say that he sought the wise counsel of "Ask Highlights" in resolving his bedtime fears. We read "Ask Highlights" first whenever we get our issue. He wants to turn straight to the back (even "Goofus and Gallant" waits until later) and hear what the staff has to say to Noonie P. of Pennsylvania, who's having a hard time making friends in middle school. So since he has monster issues, he decided to Ask Highlights.

Since he likes to read the "Timbertoes" archives, I set him up on the Highlights Web site. He can mouse and click and navigate menus (Round Rock ISD would love him!) so he figured out how to e-mail the magazine. He's not exactly able to compose a letter to the editor unassisted, so I helped him write his questions. (On other occasions, he has decided to e-mail someone, such as the Old 97s, and I have taken dictation for him. So far he has not been offensive to anyone. So far.)

We got an answer back today! Thank you, Highlights. My son has officially learned to listen to the media instead of his mother, however, and I don't think I like that. Damn Highlights Magazine, usurping me with "Hidden Pictures" and "Our Own Pages."

Highlights has changed very little since I was a kid. There's still the "Thinking" page and the rebus story for pre-readers. And "The Bear Family," which I love to read out loud because I inevitably slip up and call one of the bears "Boozy" instead of Poozy and Woozy...and Piddy and Rocco and Zeppo or whatever. Baldo gets really exasperated with me, like, Mom, you're getting it WRONG! What, he's thirteen? And then he has to say It's NOT funny! because by then I'm laughing because of course I'm imagining there really is a character called "Boozy" in "The Bear Family." That'd sure give the Highlights parents a lot of explaining to do. That would be an entirely different exercise in reading with a child. I'm still struggling with the mastodon fossils whose dented skulls suggest that the animals fought each other to the death.

"Why would they do that?"

Mastodon poon? "I guess they thought fighting would solve a problem." And you know what happened to them? They DIED!