the week in pictures

When a student of mine graduates from high school, I always buy them Michael Jordan’s I Can’t Accept Not Trying. I found the book way back in the ’90s, and found it to be inspirational and to resonate from athletics to music to life, as so many things do.

It’s been out of print for a while, so when I need a copy now I must buy them used. I have a student graduating, and an upper-level high schooler moving this year, so I just acquired two copies. Opening them up to write a little note, I discovered this:

Isn’t that sweet?

The book has never been opened.

Mark’s a loser. Mom clearly overestimated his ability to read, process, and appreciate the messages regarding tenacity, discipline, and commitment contained therein.

Is that ironic?

Actually, that’s not even the case, since Mark never bothered to read it. Mark didn’t even respect his loving and devoted mother enough to READ IT.

Mark’s a loser. Mom’s admiration is misdirected. I’m deeply saddened by the dismissiveness embodied in the fact that this book was sold to me for $1.99 (I paid a LOT more for shipping than I did for the book; is that ironic?), discarded by a thoughtless and inconsiderate young man.

Next.

Three guesses which magazine this is on the back cover of:

 My letter to the editor:

I am profoundly disappointed by the photo featured on the back cover of the June 2013 issue of Yoga Journal.

I read the magazine as part of an ongoing pursuit of a balanced, meaningful, enlightened life. A reference to, and picture of, a pole dancer does not seem to be in support of this.

I try to overlook the fact that the majority of your yoga models have super-model body types; I try to overlook the ads that feature women who are “skinny” rather than healthy and fit. But this seems to go too far. There are so many images in the media portraying unrealistic body types for women, sending subtle, and sometimes not-so-subtle messages to women about how they should look and conveying the idea that women are primarily sexual objects. I would hope that YJ could be one place that didn’t.

I also like to leave the magazine out for piano students, friends, my daughter, to leaf through. This one I feel I need to hide. 

Kathryn Budig is finally clothed, but we have an image of a woman participating in the sex trade on the back instead.

It seems that more thought could be put into these types of things, and some editorial guidance might be more judiciously applied. 

Meanwhile, I will be looking for a different yoga magazine to subscribe to.

Sigh.

***

In pursuit of a balanced, meaningful, enlightened life, I planted some perennials and annuals and a bush and a tree yesterday. I decided, in my infinite wisdom, since I was planting some 4″ pots in the midst of a lot of very persistent ground cover, to use the small planting shovel.

Here is my right palm:

The circles are around bruises (the arrow thing wouldn’t make an arrow).

They really hurt.

I’m a pianist. This was really really stupid.

I could barely stand to push the cart at costco today, and this is NOT a commentary on the sizes of the packages contained therein (although do we really need to buy ziploc sandwich bags 600 at a time?).*

Hopefully next week will be a little less ridiculous.

*We are spending a lot less on groceries.

as if Van Gogh’s woolly balls weren’t enough, updated

More of this week’s ridiculousness:

I will show this to my daughter. And then we will not shop there anymore. Ever. I will buy the A&F stuff she already has from her and burn it in the fire pit in the back yard. WE DON’T NEED MORE OF THIS!

Update: As if this isn’t offensive enough, here’s what the top of  the abc website page hosting a video clip denouncing this offensive statement* looks like:

Yeah, that helps.

So while the commentators show their support for all of the non-cool by being (appropriately) righteously indignant, the ad next to, and almost as big as, the video screen tells about the show that will teach us how to “live well” be “being and feeling beautiful.”

WHY DOES EVERYONE CARE SO MUCH WHAT WE LOOK LIKE??????

And then there’s this foolishness:

Wow. Contraception leads to all that. I must have been using the wrong kind FOR 20 YEARS.

This from a website called “One More Soul,” (not linking to it. won’t do it. find it yourself if you must, but I will not be privy to such heinous acts) dedicated to “Fostering God’s Plan for Love, Chastity, Marriage, and Children.

Trying to take a quick glance without looking at it directly, so as to avoid retching, raging, and/or breaking out in hives, I did notice one particularly insightful headline:

Abortion, Contraception Consequences on Display in Gosnell’s ‘house of horrors’

Fantastic.

Because what EVERY SINGLE FERTILE WOMAN ON THE PLANET, actually, no, what every single person on this planet needs is necessarily AS MANY CHILDREN AS POSSIBLE.

Does anybody else notice that one of the symptoms of “Sexual Chaos” is the implementation of artificial reproductive technologies? So ya’ll listen and listen good — no sex unless you want to make babies, but if God doesn’t think you’re suitable parenting material heinhisinfiniteandunknowablewisdom will deny this blessing, and you are absolutely forbidden from doing anything about it, because, despite the fact that you believe it will bring you great joy, support a strong family life, and contribute to a long, stable marriage, it actually leads to individualism, hedonism, selfishness, and lust.

Oh, and there’s an article discouraging immunizations for children, supported by their step-by-step bastardization of an article published in JAMA.

Ugh. now I’ve looked at it directly, and must go wash my eyes out with oil of newt and kill a couple of kittens or some unsuspecting old person.

*In the abc news clip, they interview a “plus size” model — she’s probably 5’11″ and maybe weighs 125 pounds. Puh-lease.

I’m not making this up

From my latest knitting magazine.

 

You can’t convince me that these people didn’t know exactly what they were doing.

 

Idiots

Which is worse?

This guy.

Or this guy:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-april-18-2013/gun-control-whoop-de-doo

 

Am starting to wonder if it’s redundant to have Politics and Stupid People as separate categories.

 

Pretension, 2013

As opposed to from where every other winery procures its “winegrapes.”

(Autocorrect just tried to change “winegrapes” to “winger apes.” Yet another clue to the word’s ridiculousness.)

Happy New Year!!!

the gift for the man who has everything

Well, except for a pair of front-laced, hard-sole knee-hi boots.

 

why not take advantage of every possible opportunity

to raise our children to think in a “sexist” way.

Today’s opportunity, listed in my neighborhood’s “Community Enrichment Classes” brochure, for youth and their “favorite significant adult.” (INMTU*)

For girls: Sweetheart swirl.

For boys: Competitive Game Fest.

Guess the girls don’t like to play games and is it any wonder men won’t dance.

She looks like she’d like to play.

(Click on the picture to see a sampling of what Bing thinks someone looking for a picture of a “Girl in a Football Uniform” is most likely to be looking for. Wonder if the one has anything to do with the other.)

Sheesh.

*I’m Not Making This Up

there but for the grace of music lessons go

Only Daughter had her first “orchestra concert” tonight. She actually asked me not to go. She took some violin lessons as younger youngster, and feels that the exertions of the 6th grade ensemble are, in a way, beneath her.

I went anyway.

(As a pointed aside, they’re not. Beneath her, that is. She had 5 teachers in 4 years because they kept moving away or graduating from college or taking so many out-of-town gigs she would have one lesson a month so she learned 1/4 what she should have, and absolutely nothing about how to read music much less how to understand what she was hearing.)

The orchestra did a fine job, all things considered. It was noted that there were approximately 75 musicians “on stage” and approximately 65 versions of any given note at any given time, but what’s a person to do?

One of the directors stood up at the end to thank all of the parents for going that extra mile (really? it’s “extra” now? shouldn’t it just be part of what everyone should be expected to do if they want to be a living, breathing, feeling member of the universe?) to support their children’s efforts to learn to play a musical instrument.

Okay, fine. Thanks are good. I’m fine. Really, I am.

Then he talks about the benefits — to the brain, to the person, to society, to the importance of students learning to communicate that which cannot be said in words; I start to think, okay, so he’s not a total doofus. But no, I “forgave” him too soon.

Wait for it. . .

“Maybe if more children learn to be thinking, feeling members of society, fewer of them would be flying airplanes into buildings.”

Oh. I had no idea. If only the terrorists had had music lessons.

=

 

Idiot.

 

Those darn trickers. . .

So much for the either/or aspect.

Sigh.

Richard Mourdock’s “Intentions”

So Republican candidate Richard Mourdock “struggled” with himself over this, and this was his conclusion.

As I read the first sentence, I convince myself that it’s not without a Zen kind of logic — you know, trying to find or make  something good out of something bad, stuff like that. And then I get to the next sentence. And now this is God’s intention. Allow me just to say that if his God thought it was appropriate to cause someone to be RAPED so as to create a child then this is a God I want nothing to do with.

There has to be a better way.

Click here to sign a petition telling him what an idiot he is, to keep on struggling, that rape is violence, and not some form of divine intervention.

Ugh.