After seven weeks of extensive anthropological observation, we can declare with some confidence that our infant child seems to most enjoy the following:
#5: Sucking on her pacifier.
RUNNER UP: Spitting out her pacifier
#4: Bouncing. (Bopping is also acceptable, as are swaying, rocking, and jiggling.)
#3: Sleeping
#2: Burping, pooping, and that moment just after burping or pooping
And, of course, like Jerry Seinfeld
#1: Breasts. (“Why would I be a leg man? I have legs.”)
In honor of this momentous occasion, we’re having ribs.
We’re also having contradictions. Perhaps this is the Walt Whitman problem (“I am large, I contain multitudes“). Perhaps it’s just a 4th Cold Rainy Day in a Row problem (I am sulky, I am dissatisfied). Just for example:
I want to buy an apartment
I want to move to Taiwan
I want to lose weight
I want to love myself
I bought these shoes cuz they were cute
I bought these shoes cuz they were on sale
(These shoes give me blisters and I’m still wearing them)
This makes it all better:
{via DailyPuppy}
PSA of the week, courtesy of my having time to kill. You’re welcome.
Men more likely to cheat on women with bigger paychecks, study says – CNN.com. Like MUCH more likely: “Men who are completely economically dependent on their female partners are five times more likely to cheat than men in relationships with women who earned similar amounts.”
Thanks, CNN! I needed an excuse to hop off the career ladder and focus on my writing which, in the past six months, has netted me a total of $100.00. It does seem to me, though, that a man who is completely economically dependent on his female partner is a unicorn. Could anyone really gather enough unicorns to make a statistically-significant sample?
Mythology aside, I can’t resign myself to a happy, faithful, penurious marriage just yet, because, as we know from the Sopranos, Mad Men, and the entire history of EVERYTHING since we got down from the trees, “A man who makes significantly more money than his girlfriend or wife is also more likely to cheat.”
Hmmm, it’s wet and salty in here. Where are we again, exactly? Oh yes: we’re in a pickle. By “we,” of course, I mean ladies. We’re damned if we support a guy and damned if we are supported by him. Is there any hope in sight, CNN-cited pseudo-scientists?
“Men in relationships with women who made about 75 percent of the men’s income were the least likely to cheat.”
Well! There it is. Make exactly 3/4 of whatever your resident male rakes in and you’ll be set. Or go lez. I know which I think would be less of a hassle.
There are fun facts aplenty in this article about How Not to Die While Walking from the NYT. Don’t cross in the crosswalk, for example. Avoid “crosstown thoroughfares like 125th Street or Canal Street,” where half of all pedestrian deaths occur. (Yikes!)
You want more? Of course you do:
Do not go anywhere between 3 p.m. and 9 p.m., stick to the side streets and skip Manhattan entirely. … cabs accounted for far fewer pedestrian accidents in Manhattan than privately owned vehicles. Jaywalkers, surely the city’s most numerous scofflaws, were involved in fewer collisions than their law-abiding counterparts who waited for the “walk” sign — although accidents involving jaywalkers are more likely to result in death.
And one discovery could permanently upend one of the uglier stereotypes of the motoring world: in 80 percent of city accidents that resulted in a pedestrian’s death or serious injury, a male driver was behind the wheel. (Fifty-seven percent of New York City vehicles are registered to men.)
This edition of “the More You Know” is brought to you by my latent anti-man bias, apparently. Some of my closest friends are guys, I swear!
One last tidbit: “Pedestrians would be well advised to favor sidewalks to the right of moving traffic — left-hand turns were three times as likely to cause a deadly crash as right-hand turns.” Left-hand turns: sinister & deadly. Got it.
By the way, feeling good about America these days? You shouldn’t be.
Lastly, this just in: Power corrupts! No word yet on “absolute power,” but I have a working hypothesis.
I’m just saying, publicly, that I feel I made the right decision in marrying the person I did.
Hey sweetie,
You now have an appointment for [time] tomorrow with Simone at the [place] on 5th Avenue in Brooklyn. It’s Swedish massage, though she can do “deep work” if necessary. Just tell them that the class was purchased as part of a series under my name.
Does that work for you?
Love,
B
In a time when, apparently, people are spatting about their relationships on the You Face, it’s got to be worth it to extend some gratitude on a blog. Right? Right.
Also, I love you and you and you and you and you. You, less so. (You know who you are.) And if any of you buy me an impromptu massage, I will bless you on the Internets too.
I would think that flying a plane into a building is a pretty black-or-white act, especially in our post-9/11 world. What is terrorism if not an attempt to intimidate people into acting in a certain way because of violence or the threat of it? If I demonstrate that I am willing to kill people for what I believe politically, whether I believe in lower taxes or global jihad, I become a terrorist.
Or — and here where it gets tricky; you might want to sit down — a hero.
The daughter of a man who crashed his small plane into a building housing offices of the Internal Revenue Service called her father a hero for his anti-government views but said his actions, which killed an IRS employee, were “inappropriate.”
Joe Stack’s adult daughter, Samantha Bell, spoke to ABC’s “Good Morning America” from her home in Norway. Asked during a phone interview broadcast Monday if she considered her father a hero, she said: “Yes. Because now maybe people will listen.”
His actions, which included murder, arson, and the destruction of federal property, were “inappropriate.” Because they were successful, however, and “now maybe people will listen,” he’s a hero.
The daughter went on to say, “‘But if nobody comes out and speaks up on behalf of injustice, then nothing will ever be accomplished,’ she told ABC. ‘But I do not agree with his last action with what he did. But I do agree about the government.'”
That government workers deserve to be killed? That our taxes are so high (in Texas, mind you, where there is no state income tax) that we are entitled to resort to extremism and destruction? What exactly does she agree with? Or, in this age of Tea Partying populist anti-government paranoia, does it not even matter? “Injustice,” she says. Injustice towards whom? About what? I am trying to stay calm, trying to understand what on earth she is talking about. I am not having an easy time.
I would like to knock on her door and ask to come in and have a nice quiet polite chat where I ask her whether she now identifies with the hypothetical daughter of a 9/11 hijacker who thinks her father is a hero. Because what’s the difference? Are Muslims terrorists and white men who act out merely “inappropriate”?
And then I will put down my cup and look her in the eye. Very quietly, I will say, I have been to three funerals and four shiva calls in six months. I have traveled to Connecticut for death and to North Carolina and to DC and to Westchester. I am tired, and I am angry, so angry that I am probably clutching the table right now. Because how dare anyone think that he is entitled to kill people, to fly a plane into a federal building just because he believes something? My mother works in a federal building and my father used to. I don’t care what you believe; you can die for your beliefs, if you feel that strongly about them. But how dare you take other people with you to prove a point?
I am baffled by the idea that there can be a 100% chance of anything. “Taxes,” suggested a friend this morning. Okay, fine: death and taxes. But anything else? Even the fact of the sun rising, the earth continuing to spin, the sky being up and the ground being down, gravity, entropy, cereal …
Surely the scientists at weather.com are rounding up? I would be much more comfortable with a percentage that allowed for the element of sheer randomness and chaos in our lives — 99.8% even. Am I alone in this?