Best In Show: Week Of August 10th

!!BONUS: WEEKEND EDITION!!

Heh.

I was too busy last night – sleeping, like that one other time when I, you know, slept – so I’m a little late with this.

Here they are, in all their glory. My favorite sparkly gems this week.

The BHJ – On Tying – Do you ever have moments like this? It’s like you’ve achieved some kind of super consciousness but not the kind of super consciousness that knows everything. It’s more like a stunned stupid super consciousness that realizes you don’t know anything. You’re extremely present but you don’t know how you got there. I grew up in Michigan. Now I live in Albuquerque. How the fuck did I wind up in New Mexico?

TheBloggess.com – It’s just coincidental that Victor got stabbed right after I wrote this. I didn’t even stab him. Some guy named Bill did. I’m the one who drove him to go get a tetanus shot. If anything, I’m a hero. – Dear Victor: I love you but I’m getting kind of weak from hunger and I know you said you didn’t poison anything but everytime I take a bite of something you leer and laugh suspiciously and I have to spit it out. I can only assume this is probably how Gandhi felt when he wasn’t allowed to eat. (Here’s a hint: He felt stabby.)

Dooce – Disaster Preparedness – I think I’ve written about it here once, but when I was seven years old a tornado touched down just a few miles from our house in Memphis, and for the next two years of my life I slept in the bathtub with all of my stuffed animals. In fact, I’d come home from school and go straight to that bathtub, the safest place in the house, just in case a tornado suddenly dropped out of the sky. Because that totally could have happened at any moment. And when it did, WOULDN’T MY SKEPTICAL PARENTS BE EMBARRASSED, because there they are stuck underneath a shard of the roof while I’m all safe and cozy in the bathtub with my Care Bears.

Her Bad Mother – Here Be Monsters – I went, and it was terrible, but also, it was good, because I went there, and although there was something that seemed very much like a dragon – a terrible, reeking, seething dragon – lurking there and although it opened its great jaws and I stared into its rank dark maw – too close, too close – and I trembled, for a moment or two, I knew, in the next moments, as I stood there, that it could not harm me and that it was just a monster whose only power was my fear.

matt, liz and madeline – four minus two – and it kills me to watch our perfect thing smile, and have her kiss me on the cheek (only when prompted, of course, which i know would make you laugh), knowing that you never saw it, and will never… AND about an hour ago… – so i told her how i knew. and how that bottle of port sits on the wine shelf at home. and why it sits there. she cried.

Miss Britt – Ugly. – I’m afraid to let myself think, even for a moment, that I might be pretty. I’m afraid that I’ll fall in love with the illusion, and someone will come along and remind me how stupid I was for ignoring my imperfections. Who do you think you are? I imagine them sneering at me, laughing at my misplaced vanity. It has to come from me. I know that. The affirmations of loved ones and strangers only serve to illustrate how untouchable my insecurities are to the outside world.

Mommy Wants Vodka – Does This Mini-Van Make My Ass Look Big? – Every time I have to deal with something related to Ben’s schooling, I feel like at any moment, an unmarked Child-Napping van will pull up and a bunch of guys in polyester suits will spring out and drag me into the van. Then, the soccer moms will all emerge from their coordinated hiding places around the playground, wielding pitchforks and torches; their pony tails mussed and their jeans hiked up to their nipples. “FRAUD,” they’ll scream at me, gnashing their perfectly whitened teeth. “You’re no MOTHER! GET AWAY FROM OUR KIDS.”

Motherhood in NYC – Oy – I slither home, make tea, have a cheese danish or two and fall into bed. Except now I feel feverish, so I call John to say what I’m certain is my last farewell and he says, “What’s that chewing sound?” and so I have to go through this whole Entenmann’s fiasco with him, utilizing what is no doubt my last bits of oxygen. And then I lay it on him. I think I have the swine flu and he says, “why, because you’re eating like a pig?” which is totally hurtful and not just to the pig.

sarahviola.org – Preoccupied AND Today is his Birthday – I don’t ever talk about my brother, because I’m too afraid of what other people think. There’s so much judgment, and too many stereotypes, and I don’t think I can handle what people will say.

Stuff White People Like – #128 Camping – Once in the camp area, white people will walk around for a while, set up a tent, have a horrible night of sleep, walk around some more. Then get in the car and go home. This, of course, is a best case scenario. Worst case scenarios include: getting lost, poisoned, killed by an animal, and encountering an RV. Of these outcomes, the latter is seen by white people as the worst since it involves an encounter with the wrong kind of white people.