Two songs in one day! I have fallen behind on my music posting, though...
This bouncy little number sounds a lot like Billy Joel to me, but the lyrics are weirder and I like the message, and the way the instruments go mad at the end.
The rest of the album is good too, although I think I may still like Gimme Fiction a little better...
I've always admired Tori Amos in theory, but have never really warmed to her... she just sometimes seemed too cloying, too precious, too practiced at being weird. However, I just got American Doll Posse, and while I was alarmed at the premise (the songs are sung by a collection of action figures? Wha?), I'm really, really enjoying the songs themselves. Her voice is strong, the music is too, and the weirdness is just about the right level. I particularly like this track (though I find the line referring to "M.I.L.F." a little jarring — boy, she may be aging well, but I don't think that line will...
I remember the "Baby Jessica falls down a well" story quite well.
Did you know that she's now married and has a kid?
No, I didn't either.
Oy!
Reading this discussion on Mother Talkers today made me think...
When you're a working parent, all too often, it seems that friction results. If you can't stay late because you have to get home before the babysitter leaves, or you have to work at home or miss a day because your child is sick, employers and coworkers may resent you for it. You CHOSE to have a child, after all. It was YOUR choice, and why should they have to be penalized with a heavier workload because you made that choice?
I would argue that NOT having children is also a choice. If you are in an opposite-sex relationship with no fertility problems, unless you've never, ever had sex with a fertile member of the opposite gender, you have indeed consciously chosen not to have children.
I don't want anyone to think I'm implying there's something wrong with that, because for many people, not having kids is absolutely the right thing for them. I'd just like to see everyone's choices respected, and I'd really like to see having kids treated as just part of life, not some extra-special or extra-annoying, inconvenient-for-the-rest-of-us thing.
(Hope I haven't just launched a flame war or offended anybody who is reading this -- this is definitely not about you!)
I used to love Mark Helprin. Yes, he's a Republican, yes, he was a speechwriter for Bush I... but he could write like nobody else. Winter's Tale remains one of my favorite books. Such a blend of whimsy and humor and tragedy and fantasy and romance and the big city... so when I saw that he had a new one out in paperback, Freddy and Fredericka, I picked it up.
I haven't been so annoyed by a book in I don't know how long.
The whimsy and fantasy is still there, and the romance, and the humor... well, maybe the humor is part of the problem. Some passages are hysterically funny, and some are just witlessly dumb (a dog named Pha-Kew is involved in one scene, and misunderstandings oh-so-predictably ensue.)
The story? Well, it's a thinly veiled satire of Charles and Diana. Why now? I have no idea. Anyway, they're sent packing off to America on a kind of "Outward Bound" crash course in roughing it for royals. You can imagine.
The last straw has come about three-fifths of the way in, where a hapless politician enters the story. His name is Dewey Knott (more bad puns! Oh boy!), the GOP nominee for president, running against the slick, helmet-haired President Self (I give you one guess who that's supposed to be).
Anyway, the result is I have to endure passages like this:
What was the point of fighting when you were forty points behind? The point was in the fight itself. He refused to give up, he was so dogged, because he was an honest man who had chosen a dishonest way of life, and, out of a sense of honour, patriotism, and obligation, he had slogged through that life, hating its every falsity, and hating himself when it overtook him. Losing was, therefore, the kind of punishment that purified him and restored the balance of honour that he needed to survive. He was grateful, then, that for every form of distress. President Self had no idea of anything except that he had to be powerful and adored. Dewey understood that having power and being adored was, as Dewey himself would have put it, " a bucket of shit." He was in it for the suffering.
I've checked the copyright on the book. It was published in 2005. At that date — even a year or two before, when Helprin might still have been writing the book — such a Republican character seems like a stretch at best. The author would have to have been clasping his hands over his ears and chanting "LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU" to be able to pull that one off with any sincerity. (In which case, I'm not sure how he managed to reach the keyboard at the same time.)
Anyway, I'm going to keep going, but this is not one I'm planning to keep or reread when I'm done.
Oh, and the New York Times has two reviews of it, one favorable, and one not (though the latter didn't seem to be as offended as I was — just unimpressed.)
I love wearing dresses. Since I'm a slob who likes to throw clothing on without having to give the matter a lot of thought, and am now also a mother who gets dressed in a hurry while trying to appease the cranky small child, dresses are perfect for me. However, it's been difficult to find the right one lately. I'm still nursing, so the neckline has to be easy to open. Also, I like a particular style of dress, one that is somewhat fitted but not tight, and those seem to come and go. At the moment, they seem to be back in, but what looks good on the hanger doesn't necessarily look good on me (as I found when I tried on a dress at my sister-in-law's clothing store.)
So yesterday I'm coming back to my car from Long's, and I pause in front of Dress Barn. I've walked by it a million times, but have hardly ever gone in — they generally have tended to be as stylish as their name suggests, with lots of straight-waisted, big shoulder-padded, ugly-patterned belted numbers. Last time I went in one in the city a couple of years ago, there was one dress in the window that appealed, but again, it wasn't a good fit.
Not this time though! I don't know what happened to the place — new management? New designers? — but they had many really nice dresses, reasonably stylish patterns... and they fit me! I ended up buying two, for $34 each. And I did this despite the pushy sales people (who kept trying to get my to open a credit card account with them) and the insipid music. Go figure.
I guess they are doing something different — according to this Motley Fool article, they're making some dough off the new dresses.
I have two suggestions for them though. One is, do something about the website! It's worse than useless.
The second one is a marketing tag line. "Let yourself shine" is nice enough, but it doesn't really communicate the brand. My version: "Dress Barn. No shit." Is that a winner or what?
