Death by Domesticity

Today's favorite headline: "Men Create More Housework for Women". According to the article, married women today spend an average of seven more hours per week on housework than single women. Conversely, married men spend an average of one hour less per week on housework than their single counterparts (although apparently they do more housework than they did in 1976 — hurrah).

As I sit here typing this, I am looking at not one but two empty glasses and a half-consumed can of Coke left scattered on the coffee table by either malicious gnomes or my husband.

Being liberated sure is awesome.

Spin Me Right Round

Today NBC announced that The Office is going to have a spin-off. I decided I'd like to have a spin-off of my life. It could star my dogs, my husband, and a bunch of random people he works with. Or whatever. The point is that when my life became too odious to bear, I could randomly drop into the spin-off and play a bit part in some story entitled "Cole and the Mystery of the Misplaced Sheet Music".

Someone, make this happen.

Myriad-Minded

When I was small, my parents, in their (I have come to increasingly realize) great wisdom enrolled me in a wide variety of extracurricular activities ranging from clarinet to karate, from riding horses to rowing canoes. One of these activities was acting, and I remember spending one summer taking classes from the fine thespians at San Diego's Old Globe Theatre.

The only problem with taking acting lessons from actual actors is that you're taking acting lessons from actual actors. I assume anyone who has ever met an actual actor will take my point. One day in improv class (the sort of painful activity in which a room full of 12-year-olds pretend to be donkeys and CEO's) our instructor burst into an utterly unsolicited monologue (or was it some sort of schizophrenic soliloquy?) in which he bemoaned the lack of soul, soul, in our performances and decried the shallow, materialistic culture that was clearly responsible for superficial and desultory acting.

Midway through what was probably the first nervous breakdown I'd witnessed, our poor instructor cried out "Have any of you even read any Shakespeare?!?!" Painfully geeky, painfully honest, it never occurred to me to do anything other than pathetically raise my hand and assure the poor man that I'd read Julius Caesar out of curiosity when I was 10. Tears literally sprang to the man's eyes, at which point he spun himself into some sort of fit involving shouts of "Children in Africa are starving to death and only one of you has ever read Shakespeare! Oh the HUMANITY!" Predictably, the 20 other children in the room stared at me as though I'd suddenly spouted an extra head (the contents of which they perhaps would have required to successfully crack a tome of the bard, but that's neither here nor there).

The lesson I took from all of this is that unashamed intelligence, while occasionally appealing to the acutely insane, or the insanely acute, to the well-socialized it is off-putting at best. And that I didn't want to be an actor.

Actually, the classes were pretty great once I got a Romulan cloaking device for the second head (and if American electoral politics teach us nothing else, Americans have very short memories). But some days I think I'd recommend canoeing.

One Fish, Two Fish, Dead Fish, Blue Fish

When I was a little girl our crazy neighbor lady asked my mom if we wanted her two goldfish because she was going on vacation and wouldn't be able to take care of them. My mom agreed, and my brother and I gained two more members for our bizarre menagerie (other residents included a gecko, two dogs and a bird).

The crazy neighbor lady's reaction was that she was so awfully glad that we were taking them, because otherwise she would have thrown them on the grass and hit them with a frying pan until they were dead.

People are very strange.

I Do NOT Heart Huckabees

I've been casually watching CNN's coverage of the Iowa presidential primary, and the station has now projected that Mike Huckabee will receive the state's Republican nomination and that Barack Obama will receive the state's Democratic nomination. I have mixed feelings about Barack Obama which I'll probably write about in the coming weeks, but that's not what this post is about. Instead I decided to look into a question to which I've paid little attention until today, and that is who exactly is this Mike Huckabee guy?

I am so, so glad I asked.

I'm sure you're all familiar with the expression, "The apple doesn't fall far from the tree." I by and large find this to be true. I am equal parts my mother and my father, as is my brother (although in vastly different configurations, which makes for enjoyably lively family dinners!). I believe that the good things I do and my accomplishments in life are greatly influenced by their parenting, which occurred both through example and through explicit communication (admittedly, often resented at the time). Equally powerful is their influence in the choices I have not made; in the mistakes I have avoided. My actions are guided by the ethical system I developed as a child under their care, and I'm proud of that fact.

I now make the following statement as the daughter of good parents and as a teacher who has had the heartbreaking experience of working with some pretty disturbed teenagers: When there is something really wrong with a kid, there's something really wrong at home. When I interact with a student who clearly lacks qualities such as empathy and good judgment and respect for living things, I surmise that there has been a significant breakdown in parenting to the immense detriment of the child (and to all with whom the child will interact throughout his or her lifetime).

It was through that lens which I approached a news story exploring the circumstances surrounding Mike Huckabee's son David getting fired from a job as a Boy Scout camp counselor due to having tortured and hanged a dog. Tortured a dog. Even writing it now makes me feel ill.

As if that fact alone weren't enough to leave me with a permanent distrust for all things Huckabee, I went on to read that then-Governor Mike Huckabee fired the Arkansas police chief, John Bailey, because Bailey wouldn't help him cover up the incident. According to former Little Rock FBI Chief I. C. Smith, "Without question, [Huckabee] was making a conscious attempt to keep the state police from investigating his son."

Since the incident was made public, Huckabee has asserted that his son did not engage in "intentional torture," and a campaign official said that he "'regrets' the incident." Oh, well, if he's SORRY, I guess it's all good. Huckabee, of course, also claims that he suddenly fired Bailey for reasons totally unrelated to his pesky ethics... reasons that apparently failed to manifest themselves until after Bailey refused to lie about the fact that David Huckabee hanged a dog. You'll be pleased to know that David Huckabee later made Eagle Scoute.

Lest you think that this clearly sociopathic behavior poor judgment was simply symptomatic of David's youth, consider the following: he was arrested for trying to get on a plane with a loaded gun this past April! (Detained terror suspects will be pleased to know that he was appropriately fined accordingly.) Guess he just forgot that he was carrying a loaded pistol in an airport. I may do crazy things like not eat chickens (or hang them), but I can definitely say I've never tried to board a plane with a Glock.

Good job with the bambino, Mr. Would-Be President.

I don't know what the people of Iowa were thinking, but I know what I think — a man who raises an animal killer and then fires an employee for refusing to compromise his own ethics has no place in the White House.

Old

When I was small(er) I used to bounce of bed as soon as the sky turned pink and immediately accost the television in order to spend the greatest possible number of minutes watching short, pig-like men hunt wabbits (or whatever the cartoon du jour happened to be). The prospect of lounging around in bed when there was a perfectly good world just waiting to be tromped around in seemed absurd. Attempts to rouse my parents were generally met with muffled go-aways till the hour-hand hit at least eight, and just as well, because they probably would have changed the channel anyway.

Today I rolled grumpily out of bed at 10:00, largely because my neck itched and there was a dog standing on my kidney. God I'm old.

Speaking of people who are increasingly geriatrically inclined, happy birthday to my youthful partner in cartoonage, Neal. I hope you like the prostate health book I bought you.