Children’s Books I Wish They Had When My Kids Were Young

As the title blatantly states – there are a few books that have recently come to my attention that I wish were around when my kids were young – but then,  18 yrs ago ti was hard to find a baby bag that was not pastel ….(although my favorite book that my oldest daughter got as a gift for her first birthday in 1992 indeed set a good precedence – Matilda, Who Told Such Dreadful Lies…)

Go the F*ck to Sleep – Adam Mansbach (“I know you’re not thirsty. That’s bullshit. Stop lying. Lie the fuck down, my darling, and sleep.” ) –  How many times I may have thought this – I am happy to say, the words never “actually” came out of my mouth. What gets me with the link I provided, is the comments … the human race never ceases to amaze me…

Baby Mix Me a Drink – Lisa Brown – part of a series of six books, from the December 2006 issue of O, The Oprah Magazine: “Wish-fulfillment for wilting parents: Lisa Brown’s deliciously naughty Baby Be of Use series, helps take the boredom out of board books. Baby Mix Me a Drink, with its playroom-bright martini for Mama (‘And Nanny wants a champagne cocktail’) lifted our spirits; so didBaby Do My Banking (‘Baby, our finances are a mess! You’d better open up a new account…’). Now if we could only find a job for the dog…”

That’s Not Your Mommy Anymore – Matt Mogk & Aja Wells – as zombies have become contemporary culture’s pet fear, this one aims to help explain the warning signs and changes mommy might be going through.

We Interrupt Today’s Writing…

With a little bit of humor. (via one of my favorite websites)

1. Law of Mechanical Repair: After your hands become coated with grease, your nose or butt will begin to itch or you’ll have to pee.

2. Law of the Workshop: Any tool, when dropped, will roll to the least accessible corner.

3. Law of probability: The probability of ‘being watched’ is directly proportional to the stupidity of your act.

4. Law of the Telephone: When you dial a wrong number, you never get a busy signal.

5. Law of the Alibi: If you tell the boss you were late for work because you had a flat tire, the very next morning or soon thereafter, you will have a flat tire.

6. Variation Law: If you change lines (or traffic lanes!!!!), the one you were in will start to move faster than the one you are in now. (Happens every time).

7. Bath Theorem: When the body is fully immersed in water or in the shower, the telephone rings.

8. Law of Close Encounters: The probability of meeting someone you know increases when you are with someone you do not want to be seen with.

9. Law of the Result: When you try to prove to someone that a machine won’t work, it will.

10. Law of Biomechanics: The severity of the itch is inversely proportional to the reach.

11. Theater Rule: At any event, the people whose seats are furthest from the aisle arrive last.

12. Law of Coffee: As soon as you sit down to a cup of hot coffee, your boss will ask you to do something, which will last until the coffee is cold.

13. Murphy’s Law of Lockers: If there are only two people in a locker room, they will have adjacent lockers.

14. Law of Dirty Rugs/Carpets: The chances of an open-faced jelly sandwich of landing face down on a floor covering are directly correlated to the newness, color and cost of the carpet/rug.

15. Law of Location: No matter where you go, there you are.

16. Law of Logical Argument: Anything is possible if you don’t know what you are talking about.

17. Brown’s Law: If the shoe fits, it’s ugly.

18. Oliver’s Law: A closed mouth gathers no feet.

19. Wilson’s Law: As soon as you find a product that you really like, they will stop making it.

Sucker Punch: A Review Worth Reading

I saw the previews for this film and thought sexy Sailor Moon ….maybe Tank Girl-ish… then I thought maybe a kick ass futuristic female empowerment movie giving new subcult-like heroes for girls … but then I read this review … great piece of writing – kudos to the author’s wit – pure entertainment. A few teaser snippets – but do click on the link above to read the full review!

The first is its complete failure to create any sort of meaningful narrative. To be blunt: This movie is dumb and doesn’t make sense and appears to have been written by sleeping frogs.

The second is that it is nothing but the violent sexual exploitation of young women created solely for the profit of the makers and the entrainment of the idle audience and therefore is morally bankrupt beyond understanding. To be blunt: It must have been written by some very terrible and troubled frogs.

…

I don’t know that pretty young women in panties kicking robots in the face so as to escape a life of sexual violence in a dream is enough to sustain my interest so as to create a successful narrative.

….

You get the impression while watching Sucker Punch, that Snyder saw Memento or Lost Highway and thought, “Oh, this is how  make teh art moviez! Your Oscarz, give me themz.”

I must admit, I am smitten with the writing in this review.  Admittedly, I have not seen the film – and with my movie viewing track record, may never see it, but the review answered some of my initial impressions.

Dragon Age 2: Taking a stand

This came to my attention today via a friend on facebook, and thought it was worth sharing. It is nice to know that change can (and does) happen.

Worth the read – even if it hurts the eyes =)

“Straight Male Gamer” told to ‘get over it’ by BioWare

BioWare adopted a (sadly) very special and very principled stance in designing one of their recent games, Dragon Age 2. Their stance was simple: relationships are for everybody, whether gay, straight, or anything else in between. You can also have have more than one romance at a time with the game’s characters. In this game, everybody is equal. Too equal, it seems, for one particular straight male gamer who was upset to be on the receiving end of a little  flirting from another male character in the game. The reaction of this Straight Male Gamer?

click the link to read the rest of the article:

http://www.nomorelost.org/2011/03/25/straight-male-gamer-told-to-get-over-it-by-bioware/

 

And the bioware forum link:

http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/304/index/6661775&lf=8

Blogging Hiatus

Trying to get this dissertation all out of my head and onto paper. It is taking longer than I had anticipated – I guess you really don’t know what writing a dissertation means until you are … well … writing one. I thought the experience of writing an Honour’s and Master’s thesis would have somewhat prepared me for this process – I thought working on original research re: conference papers would have been a hint – but there really is nothing quite like creating original research on this magnitude (re: page length + cohesiveness + flow = really hard task!).

So with that said – as much as I hate neglecting this blog – and as much as I really wanted to share the writing experience, and flesh out what I was working on here – I realize that I have to save my brain power for the dissertation.

Gender Assumptions

A bit ‘racy’ of a title for me – but I was thinking the other day about the magazine subscriptions that come to our home, and the perceived versus actual gender breakdown of them.

We get: The Hockey News, Edge Magazine, Women’s Health, Seventeen, Teen Vogue.

If someone – say the mailman – would look at the titles, he would most likely assume that our magazine reading family breakdown is as such:

Dad (The Hockey News)
Mom (Women’s Health)
Teen son (Edge Magazine)
Teen Daughter/s (Seventeen & Teen Vogue)

Whereas in reality – the breakdown is:

Mom (Edge Magazine, Women’s Health)
Teen Daughter 1 (The Hockey News, Seventeen Magazine)
Teen Daughter 2 (Teen Vogue)

no magazines for dad (well, he does read Edge – but that’s it … and it’s mine, so he has to wait until I’ve read it first..

nothing earth-shattering, but something that just made me go ‘hmm”.

A Hidden Mountain: Word Docs & Folders

I remember when I first started university, most people did not have a personal computer, institutional emails were newly assigned in my second semester, but I rarely had the time to go to the computer lab on campus to use it (and realistically, I only knew a handful of other people who used email at that time). My assignments were allowed to be handwritten (as long as it was legible) and professors preferred that students invest in a typewriter to submit ‘clean’ copies. I remember when I could afford a typewriter with a small screen that allowed me to type up to a certain amount of characters before it ‘printed’ onto the paper, which saved me a bit of paper since I could delete as I wrote. It still wasn’t perfect. While I did have an erase function (basically, liquid paper reservoir of sorts that hid the impressed ink), I remember having to throw out entire pages due to some formatting or structural error. So much paper (and ink cartridges) wasted (even if I did have pages and pages of handwritten drafts!).

As I am sitting here today, 17 years later, I realize that I really miss my mounds of yellow legal pads that had paragraphs, notes, brilliant sentences (or so I thought at the time) all organized into manila folders for reference as I tried to piece together my assigned paper. While a lot ‘cleaner’, the folders that are obsessively organized on my laptop are hidden, out of view – and more often than not – out of mind. So many times I have written a paragraph, realized that only half of it fits, so I cut and paste the rest of the phrase onto a new word doc to be saved and filed for later. Trouble is, lately it seems, that I can never seem to find that document with the one phrase on it, or I deleted it thinking it wasn’t useful only to be saddened by the fact that it’s gone when, two weeks later, I find the perfect spot for it…

The idea of digital drafts is a great one – easily manipulatable, cut and paste has revolutionalized the way I write papers, but I find myself losing the bits and pieces and having to start fresh again (adding to the hidden mountain of work). When I really want to know if a chapter works, I still need to print it out, and read it semi-aloud in order to ‘hear’ the flaws in the flow, grammar or structure. I still need to print off umpteen amounts of pages to see if what I am working on “works” – which has got me thinking as to whether or not I should simply print each stray phrase and paragraph and file them in a physical folder on my desk – while I might not save time in having to retype the words, it would surely balance the time lost looking through all my files and folders on my computer.

Trudging Through The Mess

I am full force into the writing stage of my PhD – I am aiming for a March deadline for a full draft. My first bit of feedback was not quite what I was expecting, but I must remember that this writing thing is a two way street. One’s expectations might not quite match to that of the institution’s (or those who represent the institution). But that is hardly the real problem in all of this solitary writing experience. The real problem – at least for me – is that the more time I sit alone with my research – my notes and outlines, drafts and screenshots – is that I sometimes lose my point or start to doubt my purpose.

I used to be so driven and excited  – I was out to prove something – to express what was trapped inside my head. These days, I feel like the words that propelled my writing  have all but escaped me. My passion to demonstrate – to prove my point – has escaped me as well. I am sure it is just a phase. Surely a phase that many people go through while writing such a large document… I just need to find my way back to that passion that leads to the words flowing out of my fingertips onto the page so that I can have something to edit – to polish and make pretty.

On that note –  I will open my the chapter in progress that has been haunting me for the last month and hope the sun shining through my office window will help illuminate my mind and get this done so I can move on to the fun bits (game analysis!!)