Opposite of Sycophant

All I've wanted to do this week was come home and send ANGER ANGER HATE HATE HATE out into the internet unknown, but I felt this was probably unproductive and would not necessarily be helpful. So, instead, I channeled my rage into writing. Thus, I give you:

The Opposite of Sycophant

By: Me. 

Forcibly spending a week with you

was like attending a lecture on Jerk

You showed off its malice, its bally-hoo

in mincing comments regarding my work

I skimmed the lecture’s whole outline

having taken this class times before

it’s clear you think you hide it with saccharine

but your charms and your tricks, I abhor

I can usually hide indignation,

and play right along with the games,

but with you I can’t hide my frustration

you’re Satan finessing his flames

I can’t stand your insincere candor,

with students and colleagues alike,

it’s clear that you want them to pander

to your ego that rivals Third Reichs’ 

You imply that I’m stupid and lazy

veiling thinly the truth of your joke

through questions irrelevant and crazy

that make my eyes seem appealing to poke.

What made your curriculum so bitter

worse than most assholes’ I’ve known

was your critique that my notes, they did fritter,

any story or use on their own

You told me to read what you wrote

about the team’s patients and plans

You asked that I pare down, not emote

you’d never seen something so rambling, so bland.

This hurt more than the barbs you had crafted

since it wasn’t intentionally mean

for you attacked all that had lasted

of the me that med school wiped clean.

You couldn’t have known that you’d done that,

but I know it’d make your short self seem tall,

to realize you won in our combat,

with an offhanded comment so small. 

Though I failed all your quizzes by guessing,

and despite all the spits and the swings, 

This week did teach me one lesson:

You’re a dick and you don’t know a thing.

Clueless

I can't tell you how many times I watched the movie Clueless growing up.  I can tell you that if we had time to kill waiting in an amusement park line I could recite you the first twenty minutes without stopping to breathe.

So, naturally, when I needed some audio accompaniment to my knitting this weekend, I chose the best movie I could enjoy without watching on Instant Netflix: Clueless.

When I was younger and the TV used to do that thing where Pay-Per-View was just a channel and it played the same movie 24/7 until it switched to a different movie, I would just watch movies over and over and over. My Dad is a local sports announcer and we got all the zillion channels for free, so, why not? 

We would also tape (on VHS)(VHS! How weird is that!?) the movies we liked so that when the 24/7 week was over we could continue to watch them again and again and again. And by we I mean me.

I did dupe some friends and family members into joining my couch potato-ness. In fact, I remember sitting next to my mother watching Clueless and feeling only marginally uncomfortable when it was the cafeteria scene where Dee asks Tai if she's ever done it in water. I remember my pre-adolescent self wondering... do what? Do what? And concluding that I must've missed something in the earlier conversation. Them talking about doing their homework or clipping coupons, and how crazy it would be to do poolside. Or something.

Needless to say, this time around the jokes made a whole lot more sense.

The portion where Amber tells the gym teacher that her plastic surgeon doesn't want her engaging in any activities where balls fly at her nose and then Dee quips, "Well, there goes your social life," was not in fact a nod to Amber's intramural dodgeball league that I assumed she competed in on the weekends. 

Nor does an "herbal refreshment" refer to an all natural breath mint. 

Though, to be fair to pre-adolescent me, Dee and Cher didn't get the reference either. "Well, we don't have any tea, but we have Coke and stuff."

"No shit, you guys got coke here?!"

Again, I thought... oh, poor Tai! She really is clueless! She doesn't know what Coke is!? Joke's on you past me. Joke's on you.

Last Week's Haiku

Adulation of vacation.

Nine days with no work.

It was bitchin': beach, books, bff.

I will miss this bliss.

Emma

She needs no introduction.

Except to those of you who've never met her.

Emma is the world's sweetest dog and I say that as a dyed in the wool cat person. A mama cat, if you will.

She is some sort of genetic salad originally from Oregon, facts that no doubt set the stage for her beyond mellow demeanor.

She is owned by one of my husband's BFFs. Said BFF is a veterinarian and has a soft spot for animals. (Why yes, I have encouraged him to feature this prominently on his dating profile!) During their college years The Vet (ernarian. We have way too much fun playing off vet and making 'nam jokes. I think they're only funny to us.) was traveling through Oregon with his family. They were minding their own business putting birds on things and paging through Powells' books wearing vintage get-ups, you know, basic Oregon stuff, when a dog ran across the highway in front of them.

The Vet, being the aspiring vet he was at the time, had his family stop the car, pick up the emaciated young dog and take it to an animal shelter. The dog had no collar and I guess they were in the middle of nowhere so, given her condition, assuming no owner seemed a safe bet.

The shelter put animals down if no one claimed or adopted them in 3 days. The Vet flew back home to Long Island and called daily to check on the dog.

On the third day when no one had claimed it and she was mere hours away from the big sleep, he paid to have the dog shipped across the country so he could be its puppy daddy.

My husband accompanied The Vet to JFK where they met *triumphant fanfare*: Emma.

From that moment on it's as though she knew what The Vet did for her, what he saved her from, and she has been the sweetest, most obedient, loyal dog since. (Healthy now, too. She's been with the Vet a solid 7 years at least.)

The Vet decided to move to Denver a few months ago and moved in down the street (thereby bringing me one step closer to a life long dream of having a posse akin to Friends or How I Met Your Mother. He's kind of in a Barney/Ted phase right now. Ted circa season three.) so Emma is a regular presence.

We went camping a few weeks ago and Emma of course dutifully came along. We were in the mountains whose weather is a solid twenty degrees lower than Denver's usually, so at night The Vet put Emma's sweater on and my heart melted.

She's not a teeny dog, she's a solid medium size, probably on the larger end of medium, so her garb was just so cute and utilitarian rather than annoying and pretentious. The sweater was a thick, cabled, heathered yarn number that exuded outdoorsy-ness.

Clearly she needed something more feminine.

Thus, I made Emma a sweater. Something a bit more fetching, and a little lighter for the spring and summer nights.

Why wouldn't I wrap a gift for a dog?

Hottie at the Hydrant!

Robo-Emma. 

Love it.

I used the Hoodie Dog Coat pattern, but left the hoodie part off given the bad rap they get these days. The yarn is a wool blend that I let my husband pick out. The color way is "Whimsy."

That is so fetch.

I made this.

Because I have an unhealthy obsession with Mean Girls and/or crafting.

It's an iPhone case.

Awkward Girl Problems

In conversation with my Nigerian co-resident:

Me: Did you make it to book club last night?

Her: Huh-uh, you?

Me: No, I got stuck at work. Blah blah needy sick children blah.

Her: I didn't read the book, so...

Me: Oh, yeah, it was okay. I'm kind of excited for next month's pick though.

Her: What is it?

Me: It's like a chick-lit-y looking book. It has legs AND high heels on the cover, so, you know, legit.

Her: What's it called?

Me: It's whhhhhy, huh... I... don't remember...?

Pure Pageantry

When you spend most of your days taking care of children with chronic illnesses who have parents that are scared suspicious (a gentler and more mistrustful form of shitless), having a life outside the hospital is key. 

When you’re only guaranteed four days off a month, you need escapism.

Lately, my favorite getaway is TLC’s Toddlers & Tiaras. You can’t get further from reality.

The program is akin to watching an anthropologic study unfold. There’s a culture, a culture you even recognize as human, but it is completely foreign. Or in this case, jaw droppingly back-asswards.

The most recent episode I watched flashed a 3 day old baby boy donning a onesie that was basically the equivalent of a  t-shirt tuxedo. 

I’m not sure which voice in my head was screaming the loudest... HE HAS NO IMMUNE SYSTEM! HE’S A HE! FAKE-O T-SHIRT TUXES ARE ONLY OKAY IN ATLANTIC CITY!

Interestingly, they very well may have been in Atlantic City. The show seems to showcase locales that are generally well past their prime. 

Much like the contestants' parents.

I will give the program some benefit of the doubt though... It’s hard to imagine anywhere with a modicum of liberalism embracing junior tiny misses. By eliminating those, right off the bat you’re left with West Virginia, the deep South, Youngstown, Ohio, and most other destinations that would add steep competition to an “Armpit of America” crowning.

On the show the parents generally fall into three main categories:

1. Shameless former pageant princesses themselves (surprisingly the minority)(at least in terms of who is featured on the show)
2. Those who are obese, impoverished, insecure, or some combination of the three, and using their children as a public dumping ground for their own self hatred
3. Repressed gay men

It all boils down to one thing: projection. They may as well call the program Vicarious Living Goes Blingin'.

There is a mother on one of the episodes who enters all five of her daughters into competitions. The eldest two are fraternal twins who were about 6 years old when the show aired. In an interview their mother says, aloud, in front of television cameras, for people to see and hear, “Mary looks like mommy, and she’s the one who wins the most. I definitely think she’s the prettiest of the group. Her sister, Jezebel, has a bigger nose and is just... timid. I don't expect her to really do much.” 

The show then cuts to the two girls in separate interviews. Mary says she loves pageants b/c she wins. Jezebel says she doesn’t like competing against her sister because it makes her feel bad.

Uhm, hello. Pathology much?

She's three.

The irony being the years and years of therapy these kids will rack up will altogether probably cost less than the amount their parents have invested in toddler pageantry careers.

It’s insane.

They're airbrushed to boot. Airbrushed. Pretty sure skin is never nicer than when you're under the age of 5.

The documentary usually starts out in various competitors homes and they then follow the competitors through their categories on to crowning. Too frequently they have wide angle shots of low income housing with dilapidated roofs, outdated kitchens, and just other stigmata of hard financial times, and then pan to the mothers talking about their daughter’s $3,000 dresses. 

As in $3,000 for one dress. That they will wear as a 5 year old. Which means it will fit them for like five minutes.

How terrified are you right now?

These little girls get spray tans (at least it's just spray? slightly redeeming?), manicures, facials, pedicures, fake nails, fake eyelashes, and “flippers.” Not aquatic flippers as an accessory to the swimsuit competition like I originally thought, but rather a panel of plastic fake teeth that they can wear over their unsightly natural teeth. Mothers have said they choose this option to hide their child’s yellow teeth, lost teeth, crooked teeth, or abundant gums.

I mean seriously. You think you're gonna sleep tonight?

You can just see all the self-esteem the parents wish they had getting leeched out of their offspring criticism by criticism. 

And their routines... oh God, the routines. It’s so horrifying you can’t look away. You really can’t. It varies from comic awkwardness to painful foreshadowing of future stripper careers. The worst are the fathers who are choreographing the routines and are clearly looking past their kid to visualize the true calling as a Vegas show girl they (the dad) could have had if they weren't born into a den of evangelical Christianity. 

DSM-IV diagnoses at these things are more ubiquitous than hairspray. 

I understand the arguments for building confidence and supporting what a kiddo thinks they want their hobbies to be... but good lord. The parents will say in their interview that oh, their 30 month old ASKED them to do pageants. They WANT to be on stage.

The cameras then cut to the child’s individual interview and the kid has a speech delay so stark they have to run closed captioning on the bottom of the screen so that we can understand that they say, “Mommy makes me.”

Furthermore, the awards these kids get are things like, “Best Smile,” “Most Beautiful,” and don’t even get me started on the hierarchy of Grand versus Ultimate versus Supreme versus Brattiest Brat of all the Brats. What message does that transmit?

It’s fascinating, disgusting, and transfixing all at once.

I have to say though... even if some of these parents are way wakadoo and off the deep end, it's kind of nice to see them involved in their child’s life. And there are the rare families here and there who you can tell legitimately are doing it for fun and are able to keep their kid balanced.

But then there are the others, ohhhh the others, who make really terrible parents, but really great television.