My first New Year’s resolution: Watch more TV

I am completely serious about this.  Much virtual ink has been spilled over the fact that this past decade has borne witness to the emergence of television as a legitimate, honest-to-goodness art  form.  And since I strive to have my finger on the pulse of popular culture, and because I like both art and being entertained, I want to watch more TV.  Here’s a short list of what I plan on ordering as soon as I restore my Netflix account:

The Wire: I know, I know, I have NO EXCUSE for not having watched this already.  It’s at the top of my queue.

The Sopranos: I’ve seen a few episodes on A&E or something and was very impressed.  Plus, I read somewhere that The Sopranos is to TV what Citizen Kane was to movies, and I love me some Citizen Kane, so.

Six Feet Under: A friend recommended this to me, and she has really good taste.

Carnivale: Word on the street is that this series depicts the struggle between good and evil, free will and destiny, uses both Christian and Masonic imagery, and is set during the Dust Bowl.  What’s not to like?

Dexter: Recommended by multiple reliable sources.

The West Wing: I should be conversant with this.  Plus, I hear it’s entertaining.

the wild west (of pregnancy)

The New York Times has a fascinating piece on the woolly legal issues surrounding surrogacy, highlighted by a sad, complicated case in Michigan.  The short version of the story: an infertile couple, the Kehoes, created embryos with donor eggs and sperm.  They then selected a surrogate, Laschell Baker, to carry the pregnancy to term.  The Kehoes reimbursed Baker for her medical expenses, and expected to gain guardianship of the babies after they were born.  Things got dicey, however, when Baker learned of Amy Kehoe’s psychiatric history during the guardianship hearing.  (Kehoe had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and had been arrested years earlier for cocaine use and driving under the influence.)  Despite the fact that she was on anti-psychotics and, according to her psychiatrist, had had no symptoms of mental illness for nine years, Baker argued that Kehoe was an unfit mother.  Since Michigan law regards surrogacy contracts as void and unenforceable, she successfully disputed the Kehoe’s guardianship and the twins are now in the Baker’s custody.

It’s a heartbreaking story, and I’m pretty disturbed by the fact that Amy Kehoe was determined an unfit mother not because she was currently displaying erratic or abusive behavior, but because she had a medical history of mental illness.  I don’t think that Laschell Baker was right to withhold the babies for that reason.  But!  The article really drove home the idea that in surrogate situations, children (or potential children) are being treated as commodities—straight up, I-paid-money-for-it-so-it’s-mine commodities.  The basis for the Kehoe’s legal claim to parenthood was that they commissioned and paid for the babies’ creation.  To wit:

“We paid for the egg, the sperm, the in vitro fertilization,” Ms. Kehoe said as she showed off baby pictures at her home near Grand Rapids, Mich. “They wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for us.”

While I’m not discounting the importance of either this or the obvious emotional investment they had, the idea that parenthood in these situations must necessarily be awarded to whomever paid for the conception and gestation of the fetuses, as opposed to whomever did the gestating, is not immediately obvious to me.  One of the commenters on Jezebel, purpleshoes,  summed it up really well:

To me, there are two different questions here: whether a woman gains the legal right to decide what happens to other people’s genetic material once it’s in her uterus, and whether women can sign ultimately binding legal contracts dealing with the disposition of a fetus that is not yet born. I say the precedent for the first is clearly sperm – in that a woman has a right to continue or discontinue a pregnancy even though some portion of the genetic material involved is not hers, because the major requirement to continue the pregnancy is not the existence of the initial cells but rather the major involvement of her internal organs – and the precedent for the second is clearly adoption, in which women can’t sign away rights to children that legally don’t exist yet, so any decision made before birth can only be considered provisional.

In other words, carrying a pregnancy to term is A Big Deal, both ethically and biologically.  It’s not like watering someone else’s house plant for nine months.  There are good reasons why most states have been reluctant to recognize surrogacy contracts.  Parental rights and obligations cannot usually be contracted away, and like that last quote mentions, it’s legally impossible to opt out of one’s parental responsibilities to a child who doesn’t exist yet. Birth mothers considering adoption cannot relinquish custody while they’re still pregnant, and a lot of states allow a grace period of a few days after giving birth before they have to make a final decision.

Oma-isms

This thread about things your mom says is hilarious.  Both my parents have arsenals of stock phrases, but I’ve come to realize that my maternal grandmother’s sayings are where it’s at, linguistically speaking.

Here are a few of them:

“Himself”/”Herself”:  This one is hard to explain, but she uses these pronouns to draw attention to a third person in the room (usually a child) without letting that person know she’s talking about him.  For example: you and another adult are in the same room as a two year old.  The two year old does something cute, so you say, “look at himself,” to the other adult.  A second, less frequent, usage involves using “himself” or “herself” to refer to a recently disgraced person, i.e., a misbehaved child or a philandering politician.  Also, you always say “himself” or “herself” as though it’s in italics.

“God Love ‘em”: OK, it’s not that unusual.  But it’s very useful for expressing goodwill mingled with condescension and pity.  My cousin once said it about Michael Jackson.

“That’s dear!”: In this context, “dear” is how you refer to the actions or creations of a person with questionable taste who is nevertheless well meaning.  Your great aunt gave you a kitschy wall print for Christmas?  How dear!  It’s like “sweet” or “adorable,” but with more bite.  ”Dear” can also be used when speaking to children, as in: “that was a dear birthday card you made me!”  Interestingly, in this case it is not at all condescending.

“Well”: This is a conversational panacea which you can say in response to something either very boring or, more often, something very shocking.  –” Oma, I like chocolate ice cream but not the kind with chocolate swirls in it.’ –”Well.”  Or: –”Hey, look at my tongue ring!” –”Well.“ Now that I’ve described it, this doesn’t seem like a strange use of the word, but I assure you that it is.  Maybe it’s the intonation she uses; somehow, the one syllable conveys whole sentences and paragraphs.

Notorious former mistress says Beyonce videos are too slutty

Camilla, please.  Normally I kind of like you and your horseiness.  You are the best living example of the hearty-middle-aged British-woman-in-tweeds archetype, which is near and dear to my heart.  I was even touched when you finally married Charles (whose young self is brilliantly described here as “mildly dashing”).  True love, after all those years and all that adultery!  But are you really going to criticize poor Beyonce for scandalizing the public?

You do remember this, right?

 

what?

Thanksgiving really screwed up my internal clock.  I keep checking Gawker in the hopes of reading Altarcations (which, I swear to you, is literally the best thing on the internet), but then I realize it isn’t Sunday yet.  Fucking fuck!

 

Is this design better?

The font in the other one was too small for my diseased eyes.

Somewhere, Paul Kinsey is still writing copy

Because I can’t come up with a better explanation for the existence of this horrid ad:

Or these:

Someone needs to tell these guys that for women, being ogled is a significant deterrent to exercise.  I used to dread going running whenever I was home on break from college, because there was this guy who lived a mile or two away who would ogle and harass me constantly, to the point of following me IN HIS CAR because he was angry that I wouldn’t stop and talk to him.  Fortunately, I think he moved away, since now I can go running in peace.

Finds

So, I’m a big fan of the very particular pleasure that accompanies the re-discovery of something I used to love but had forgotten about.  Usually I get this feeling by re-reading old, strange books from my childhood or listening to early Weezer albums, but today I re-discovered my two favorite advice columnists.

The first is Break-Up Girl, writer Lynn Harris’s comic superhero alter ego.  Break-up Girl covers basically every romantic problem ever; she has comfort for the heartbroken, advice for the lonely, and swift kicks upside the head for the clueless.  Her advice is always good and practical and interesting to read.  And, as someone who is currently dealing with the aftermath of a pretty soul-crushing break-up, I can attest that she makes me feel better!  Plus, the site has comics.

The other is Carolyn Hax, who is, in my opinion, the best all-around advice columnist out there.  Instead of going on tangents,* she cuts right to the most important questions, even when dealing with the modern equivalent of Don Draper.

*one of my pet peeves about advice columnists; see Cary Tennis and Susie Bright for the most egregious examples.

Why yes, I would like you to bring it on home to me

This Life list of the sexiest men of the ’50s, 60s, and 70s and Jezebel’s addendum are pretty good.  But they both forgot Sam Cooke!

I mean, really.

Curiouser and curiouser

The other day I was in a downtown Seattle coffee shop, waiting to meet up with a friend.  I went to put a lid on my drink, and I noticed a long legged couple with matching long black hair, skinny black jeans and leather jackets.  Then  I did a double take and realized that the woman was actually a mannequin precariously strapped to a wheeled carry-on, so it looked as though it was standing.  I suppressed my urge to gawk–oh, how I wanted to– and hurried back to my seat at the other end of the store.

Then!  The male half of the couple came over to me, leaned in, and asked, “do you mind if my WIFE and I sit next to you?”  He really emphasized “wife.”  And I said, no of course not, and then, wickedly, I began to move over to make room for his WIFE because he was standing behind the only seat on my left.  And he was like, “no, no! You don’t need to move over.  My wife sits here”–and he gestured to the empty space next to the stool–”and I sit here.  Just RELAX.”  So I did, and he brought the mannequin over and situated her on her carry-on, and then my friend came and I left.

Later, I told my dad, who said this guy is a regular fixture downtown and has been wheeling his wife around with him for years.

I don’t know anything about this man or his relation to the mannequin, except that he took great pains to make it look like him (while still being obviously female)  and that he was very intent on letting me know that he considered it his wife.  It reminded me a little bit of the Real Doll phenomenon, and also of Objectum Sexuals, both of which I find bizarrely fascinating.  Perhaps the mannequin is an amalgam of the two?

*Full disclosure:  I anthropomorphized the shit out of things when I was a very small child; I remember playing with lotion bottles and shoes and imagining them as people with families and genders.  But I was three.

**It’s interesting to me that one of the women in the objectum sexuals story said she always got a sense of an object’s gender.  I have mild synesthesia, both grapheme-color and number form, and I guess sensing the gender of an object doesn’t seem markedly different from knowing the color or personality of a number or a letter.