What's On My Mind

On a more serious note than usual, I just can't stop thinking about the news today, of what I have just tried to digest on the front page of the NYT.

The cruise ship the QE 2 is about to be retired and turned into a floating hotel in Dubai.

Yup, after 40-odd years of transatlantic travel, the Queen Elizabeth 2 just made its 701st, and also its last, appearance in New York City's harbor. And I feel cheated. I always wanted to go on the QE2. It seemed only a matter of time. My grandparents were always going on the QE2! (Okay, maybe just once or something but you know, it's family tradition!) Going on the QE2: I just assumed it would happen, you know? When I retired! On my non-existent 401k.

Now I have to be content with sitting on a stationary QE2 in Dubai and frankly that's not the same thing. For one, where's the British hospitality? It just won't be the same to take my Earl Grey and crumpets from a stewardess in burka.

Bloody bad times indeed.

Dear Levi Johnston

Dear Levi,

I know the whole world has been telling you this, but it never hurts to hear it again: you really are very cute, which is a good thing for the baby of Bristol Palin since she is herself very cute as is her mother, and all that cuteness will help your kid out when you guys can't deliver in the more cerebral departments.

You also do very cute things. Like when you lost the "promise ring" that, in a twist on tradition, your budding feminist Bristol gave to you, and you decided instead of a ring you'd just tattoo Bristol's name on your ring finger. I know a lot of people who will think that is cute. People like Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee and a bunch of others who dig that whole tattoo-instead-of-ring thing. I myself don't find that very cute, personally, but I can understand how it might be deemed as cute by others and how it will definitely seem refreshingly cute if your mother-in-law makes it to the White House. The tattoo, paired with your dropping out of school to become a rigger or a jigger or whatever it is they call oil people, can be cast in quite a cute light: it's that whole down-home Wasilla in Washington thing.

I really did enjoy reading more about you today over at ABC News. Like, this part:

The soft-spoken teenager discussed his relationship with Palin and how life has changed with fatherhood fast approaching. He agreed to talk despite the presidential campaign's advice in the days following Gov. Sarah Palin's nomination to avoid the media.[...] "They're not telling me anything right now," Johnston said as he checked his Blackberry. "It's pretty chill."

I just love how you check your Blackberry! Levi Johnston is a busy man! Seriously cute. And I love this part too:

Johnston hinted he's expecting a boy, but he declined to discuss baby names.

"I'm looking forward to having him," he said. "I'm going to take him hunting and fishing. He'll be everywhere with me."

I love how you didn't give the gender away. Very artful of you, my cute young friend!

Another reason I probably find you cute is that you remind me of an ex-boyfriend of mine who was terribly cute. I mean, really devastatingly handsome. You can't maybe tell in this mug shot I'm about to show you but trust me, handsome as all get-out, like you, Levi.

Unlike you he actually came from a top-notch blue-bloody family but he went a bit bananas. I remember it as the big tragedy of my early 20s, where I met this lovely cute person whom I thought I could have babies with and then one day he just stopped coming out of his bedroom. His roommate called me and told me he had locked himself into his room with pounds of pot, and was maniacally drawing pictures of horses, which he would slide under the door. The horses were sort of a bad sign I guess, but I was in my 20s so I ignored the sudden equine obsession and continued to throw myself at him in a fog of adoration. Then he went more nutso and druggy. Luckily he was very rich and managed to purchase his own crack den down south. Sadly it all came to an end when he was had up on rape charges. And I know it's bad and all to say but, in spite of the bad lighting in that mug shot (which I Googled) and the drugs that have ravaged him since we were young, I still think my ex looks a little bit cute so...you know, maybe the alleged victim sort of got lucky? I'm sure your mom-in-law would agree with that one!

Anyhoo, I suppose I'm getting a bit off-topic here, Levi, not that you would know about that since you probably didn't get to the whole 5-paragraph essay bit in school. I guess I just wanted you to know that, like a lot of people, I think you are dang cute! And I sincerely wish for your baby that you and Bristol will really resist tradition when it comes to that baby name and just go with something like Jane or William. So that's my advice. And, you know, stay away from the drugs! Because when you're a rigger or a jigger or whatever, there can be temptations! Of the meth-y sort! So just, you know, just say no! If you can't keep your pants on, at least keep your nose clean.

I guess that about sums it up for Crabmommy advice, Levi. All best to you, your bride, and the fruit of your loins...How cute will that baby be? Forget it! I almost can't stand to imagine the level of super-cuteness about to debut. The future for all of us in America may be uncertain, but experts are predicting a landslide of cuteness in that scrumpulicious new Wasillian you've been working on. So, high five on that!

All best,
Crabmommy
p.s. Readers: acorns. Do you love acorns? I bloody love acorns.

It's All About Me

"That song's about me?" Crabkid asked this morning as we listened to the radio en route to school. I'd switched from Voice of Doom NPR to some oldies thing and the song was "She's My Lady." You know that one:

Well she's all you'd ever want,
She's the kind they'd like to flaunt and take to dinner.
dum di dum di....blahdiblah...She's a winner.
She's a lady. Whoa, whoa, whoa, she's a lady.

"Why's he talking about me?" Crabkid said, all huffy-like in the back.

So I'm wondering if a) she's just a natural narcissist (Gosh! Not my gene pool!), or if b) she's simply relating to the song because her dad used to refer to her as Baby Lady.

She's a lady. Whoa, whoa, whoa. She's a lady.
Talkin' about that little lady, and the lady is mine.

Crabkid grew progressively more annoyed by the song. "Why's he calling me that?" she huffed. "Why's he call me his lady. I'm not his lady." So I'm thinking it's b) above, by this point. But then, the kicker, proving definitively a) over b): "Why isn't he calling me by my name in that song."

In an only weakly related segue...please go here to weigh in on what it's like to be a little girl who really has the world revolving around her. As in the latest newly anointed living Hindu deity. The little tot has to spend a night alone in a room full of goats heads to get the job. Yeah, yeah, cultural relativism and blah-di-blah, but it must really suck to be a goddess.

I beg of you, wade into the mire via the comments button and weigh in. Or just stopp by. Even just clicking for a nanosecond. You see, my Cookie blog job (or as I like to call it, the bloglet) depends on readership. Which means that I depend on you. And this here original unauthorized, steamy, and salacious version of Crabmotherhood and rando-whatnot bloggery also depends on you. Because without you there is no point to any of it. And without Cookie paying me to sit in my robe and call it a job, there can be no waffling on about various claptrap and bloglicious ephemera here at Blogger. And these are tough times, and Cookie's parent company is going to get lean and mean and Conde Nasty on me if I don't drum up some peeps, ai-aight? Do you see the interconnectedness of it all? Do you see how my proverbial back is against the wall, albeit cushioned by several deep inches of plush purple blogging robe?

And also there is incentive for you to read my professional giglet. Oh, yes indeedy! Every one of you who visits my bloglet will receive a check in your bank account! So completely not kidding! I will deposit $56 into your very own PayPal account just for having you read the bloglet. And if you send another person, preferably of the mommy persuasion to my bloglet, I will add another $56 into your PayPal account!

You can't beat that! Just don't forget to drop me a note after you've visited the bloglet, with your full PayPal information contained in said note (including passwords) and my personal banker in Lagos will make an immediate deposit into your account.

Shweesh! I've never linked so much to myself in a single post. My blogging finger is on fire!

Sooooriously...I have a number of most excellent upcoming posts for you here, involving among other things the much-promised and long-delayed return of Grammarmama as well as Randomommy (Notes from the Domestic Frontier). And, for those who subscribe to the Crabmommy Premium Package™, a comprehensive analysis of my school uniform from 1980s South Africa, the country of my birth. That post necessitates the first ever Crabmommy photograph published on this here blog (not including my sulky mug in my banner). If you want to see cultural relativism at its finest, you need look no further than the image I shall soon be presenting to you. Of me in my apartheid-inflected, fascist-inspired school uniform, a getup I wore every single day for 12 years.

Thanking you for your patronage. And how's your 401k doing? Is it doing as well as mine? I haven't lost a dime. Because I never had a dime in there to begin with. Har har har. We laugh, but evidently I have very sound fiscal policies. Matter of fact I might just take that to a mini-series in which I give financial advice on this very blog: Your Two Cents: Ask Crabmommy.

Really, ask me. Ask me anything.

Because Other Moms are Funnier

I think we're all a little tired of me and my Sarah Palin satires. I'm finding myself a smidge dull and obvious at present, so I'm going to send you elsewhere instead. Here are 3 nice linkies to amuse:

1. Blogger Sugar and Snails talks of how she found a velvet Jesus painting at a thrift store...and through the miracle of bribery, managed to wrest the artwork from another shopper. Read it here.

2. See this most excellent entry from blogger Suzanne Broughton's 6th-grade yearbook.

3. If you aren't already watching Season 2 of Motherhoodlum over at Offsprung then shweesh, get on with it already! Readers may remember Emily and Marty from when I first wrote about them here...they "J-vibed" on Jdate, got together, had a baby and now Ems is navigating mommylife...getting kicked out of eco-mommy groups ("Oh my God, she's only two and her carbon footprint is huge!"), inveigling herself into a single-moms group in a desperate bid for sisterhood, almost making out with her sleazy ex-boyfriend in an alley while out taking the baby for a walk, and trying to figure out how to keep the flame between her and Marts. If you haven't seen the show, start here.

Palinoscopy: Exclusive Crabmom-Sarah Palin Interview!

I am goshdarn excited to tell you that while Sarah Palin hasn't granted many media interviews she agreed to let me interview her candidly for my motherhood blog, so long as we avoided the topic of motherhood altogether and did not mention baby names even once. Here follows a transcript of that session:

Crabmommy: Ms. Palin, you only got your passport last year. But you have spoken of being able to see Russia from Alaska.

Sarah Palin: It's just right over the border.

C: Does seeing Russia sort of count as having traveled to another country? You know like "I've seen other parts of the world"?

SP: Absolutely, yup, yup.

C: So how do you see Russia—

SP: Well, Crabmommy, you just don't blink!

C: Because if you blink then you can't see it anymore?

SP: Absolutely!

C: If you make it to the White House...you've got your Blackberry, your breast pump, and your nuclear button. How do you know which button to push at 3am?

SP: "All of 'em, any of 'em. You just don't—

C: —blink?

SP: Absolutely.

C: Do you feel qualified to make decisions about your own hairstyles as a VP?

SP: I still can't answer that question until somebody answers for me: what is it exactly that the VP does every day?

C: What do you think of the race thus far? How confident are you?

SP: It is a very long race. Iron Dog is the longest race of its kind in the world. But Todd has won four times and as a family we are committed.

C: Seriously, things aren't looking so hot for you guys at the moment. How exactly is your team going to win?

SP: On a snowmobile. Iron Dog is like Iditarod, without the dogs.

C: With regard to dogs, if you had a pit bulls would you put lipstick on them, and if so what color?

SP: I'll try to find you some and I'll bring them to you.

C: So you think raped women should pay for their own rape exams?

SP: Absolutely, yup, yup.

C: Do you think raped women sort of brought it on themselves then?

SP: Absolutely, yup, yup.

C: So what do you do if a rapist is coming at you?

SP: I just say "thanks, but no thanks."

If You Are Homeless

It's been serious, sincere, and heavy over at Crabmommy of late. And it's about to get worse. Because as we all know a crisis is afoot. And while I usually traffic in claptrap and whatnot and randomommy trivia, I feel compelled to talk about the current crisis. I cannot ignore the grim realities of day-to-day life in America. And I know you all want to know what I think about what's going down in our country today. And many of you have written to ask me how I'm managing and how my 401K is doing and the answer is very well! I have taken ZERO losses there. Because there was NEVER ANYTHING IN IT TO BEGIN WITH.

Anyway, it's true that we're in trouble right now. And facing tough times. I myself worry every day. About the big stuff. Like how to re-register my car with the Department of Motor Vehicles.

As some of you may recall, I moved recently, away from the rodeos and Polish poolboys of my former resort town in Wyoming...and ever westward to another state where the rain falls freely and the Teva sandals are as abundant as the congenial lesbian dogwalkers and micro-brew-drinking men sporting Devendra Banhart-y folksy facial hair and Maasai earrings.

But this is a state also very interested in one driving a law-abiding smog-checked car. And apparently I have very little time to get my car tested for smog output before I will be sent to a special jail reserved for the most criminal of offenders: those who don't recycle properly and whose SUV's are belching unconscionably into the fine misty air.

So I have been going to our state's website. And reading about emissions checks and re-registering of licence plates and such. And I came upon this incredibly fine and sweet and oddly touching thing that I must share with you. Check out this section at my state DMV website, on proving residence:

All documents submitted must be acceptable to DMV. DMV has the discretion to reject or to require additional evidence to verify your residence address.

Homelessness

Individuals that are homeless may use a descriptive address such as "under the west end of the Burnside Bridge."

Nice to know that if the economy is going to screw Crabhubby, Crabkid, and me out of our rental home (and it actually, jokes aside, might), we are welcome to domicile ourselves under one of Crabcity's bridges, so long as our car burns clean.

Milking It: Manipulating Motherhood on Planet Palin

Seems quite a few women are incensed to see the "sexism" abounding on the net (and here at Crabmommy) when it comes to questioning Sarah Palin's ability to run the White House, should she be so required if McCain kicks the bucket or spontaneously combusts in a fit of his trademark ire.

Many of you agreed with me when I said--saucily, people, as is my wont--that anyone breastfeeding her babe shouldn't have a finger near the nuclear button; others found my post anti-feminist and offensive. I find it hilarious and stupid in equal measure that we are even having a conversation about empowered mothers, women's rights, and shattered glass ceilings when the person in question is totally against women's rights and reveals herself to be quite a questionable mother at best, not to mention a believer that the road to smart women begins with teaching Adam and Eve in school.

Some thoughts:

• If Sarah Palin were a great VP candidate we would not be talking about motherhood.
  
• If Sarah Palin were a great mother we would not be talking about motherhood in the White House because she would not be politicizing her children for her own ambitious ends.
  
• If Sarah Palin's camp thinks it's unfair for her attackers to talk about her children and pontificate on her ability to simultaneously be a mother and a VP, then Sarah Palin's camp ought not talk about her newborn, nor parade her knocked-up child on stage for all the world to see in a grand fallacious gesture of "walking the talk" of family values.

The irony, the hypocrisy. It's so funny, it's turned me serious.

In spite of the Palin freak show we continue to engage in absurd conversations in which people say such things as "If Obama had a baby no one would ask him how he planned to juggle it" etc. etc. Similarly, several comments here and elsewhere suggest that if Obama had a young baby then we too should question him on how he would cope. Puh-lease.

Me, I don't ask the same questions of Obama or McCain because neither man has a babe attached to his bosom, nor does he traffic in talk about juggling breastpumps and Blackberrys and "soccer mom" hoo-ha. If either man were the primary caregiver of an infant I might idly question how that kid would get shafted (though it wouldn't play a role in my vote), but that's not the case here, is it?

This convo is so ridiculous in its bending-over-backwards attempts at political correctness. For one, Obama isn't grandstanding about family values while parading his pregnant teen onstage like a circus animal and speaking proudly about stepping up to grandparenthood. Nor would Obama in power ever do anything to reverse a woman's right to choose whether she wants a family at all. Obama is not a mom and he's not running as a Supermom while also attempting to stop moms from making their own decisions about family and career, so I'm not asking him to show me if he can handle being a mom and running the country at the same time.

As for Palin "walking the talk" let's hear some of the talk and then see if she's really "walking" it. On abortion: we all know Palin is pro-life, even if her own daughter were raped, (and on the subject of rape, as we now know Palin thinks raped women should pay for their own rape kits). As for the pro-life/pro-choice question, I believe we are meant to see Palin's Down's baby, the unfortunately named Trig, as the living example of Palin's truly "walking" her own talk. I dare say that's a major insult to anyone with a Down's child: comparing Palin's circumstance with Trig to one in which a person is raped and falls pregnant is offensive beyond all measure, yet that's what's actually between the lines if anyone considers Trig proof of Palin's "walking" her pro-life talk; i.e., that the decision to have her child proves her to be a woman willing to go all the way when it comes to her beliefs on life vs. choice.

I believe that everyone has the right to abort or keep any baby, healthy or not, but I don't believe that Ms. Palin's decision to have her Down's baby is something for which anyone should be congratulating her, much less a signifier of the beautiful courage of the pro-life position; Palin's decision to have her son is her personal choice in a personal and individual case, a case with far more opportunity for a mother's optimism than, say, the case in which a fetus has a disease or a congenital defect that would cause it unbearable suffering and/or certain death were it to be born. A Down's kid may have health complications, but there are, quite obviously, way worse diagnoses than that. And then there's rape, Ms. Palin.

To reiterate, babies are a matter of personal choice in my book--the mother's choice. That Ms. Palin *may* exhibit courage in the matter of choosing to have Trig is irrelevant to me and should be irrelevant in any political campaign. But it's not, for Palin and her team and supporters have mined and distorted this narrative of so-called personal courage in quite the twisted way, when you look at it closely. As for poor naughty knocked up and unfortunately named Bristol, again Palin is not walking her talk because it's not hers to walk: it's Bristol's, whether Mom wields the influence or not. And, to be blunt, this daughter cannot either be touted as an extension of Palin's particular pro-life position because this daughter has not been raped, though apparently if she had been, Mom would still push her to have that baby. Nice!

Whatever happens, America will get what America asks for. And so many Americans right now think Palin is, at the very least, is a woman we should all take great pains to view as capable of both motherhood and governance, because any other stance is sexist and backward and redolent of double standards! Slap on the wrist, Crabmommy, and anyone else who dares to suggest that her particular circumstances as a mother might cloud her ability to run the country.

To the various self-proclaimed feminists who have come over to this blog and declared me and my supporters to be sad disenfranchised victims of patriarchy: keep talking your PC talk and we may all soon become sad disenfranchised victims of GOP patriarchy, only this time disguised in a skirt.

Yet the tedious argument grinds along: whether we dig Palin's issues or not, we ought to respect her right to go for the VP role untainted by pesky sexist questions. After all, party affiliation aside, she's still a role model, right? She's still punching at that glass ceiling while pumping her boob with the other hand! She's still a woman with career and yet devoted to family, juggling furiously and getting it all done! And even if she does have some kinks as a mom, who are we to judge...right? I mean, it's not our business.

From a moral or political perspective I don't care if Palin is a bad mother, which I think she is. Being a bad or good mother or father is a non-issue for me among the issues I do care about when it comes to this vote because I don't particularly care about the candidates' children: I happen to believe the personal lives of politicians have nothing to do with me or my interests. (I also don't give a royal fig who the candidates sleep with; nor do I give a rat's bum whether they're cross-dressers or porno-watchers or wear purple drawstring pants in their spare time.)

I don't care if Palin's a bad mother, or a good mother. But I do care that a woman running as a mother and using her specific family circumstances to further her campaign is not allowed to be criticized as a mother. That's where the double standards come in. If you raise the subject of motherhood in your campaign, Palin, then so can we all. And for my money, you can be any sort of mother you like, just not in my White House (where all that late-night feeding might distract you).