Posts by Danielle
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This rather reminds me of the breastfeeding discussion. "You individuals are doing something bad!" vs "this issue is far less to do with individual agency than it is structural!"
(In any case, I'm the apparently rare non-smoker who really doesn't give much of a shit about open-air smoking. Come, smoke vaguely near me in a park, you hapless addicted souls! I will happily move six inches to the left!)
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Hard News: Everybody's News, in reply to 3410,
True fact: there was a 90s spinoff series called The New WKRP in Cincinnati. (I wasn't watching it on September 11, 2001, though.)
One of my favourite things ever: "the senator, while insisting he was not intoxicated, could not explain his nudity".
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Hard News: Everybody's News, in reply to Andre Alessi,
made me aware of a genuine undercurrent of anti-Americanism I’d never noticed before in some parts of New Zealand culture
My father - who, it must be said, was not hugely into appeasement - was called a "Yankee bastard" pretty regularly when he lived here in the 70s and 80s. My husband often says it's good for him to teach in south Auckland because it's one of the few places in NZ that Americans aren't completely unpopular. He is often asked if he knew Tupac. :)
The September 11 tale: I was in Houston, at home before classes, watching an old episode of WKRP in Cincinnati (I seem to recall it was an episode about the station's building being demolished, appositely enough). My then-fiance rang from where he was substitute teaching to tell me to change the channel. I didn't go in to university that day because there were rumours that "they" would go for other large cities (Houston is the fourth-largest in the country) or even NASA for the symbolism. We got married later that year in Vegas and I still remember all the graffiti/tributes outside the New York New York hotel - it seemed so perfectly American, both heartfelt and hugely tacky. (With a few friends, we made some quiet probably-too-soon jokes about the hotel soon instituting daily mini-plane-crashes into the mini-Twin-Towers.)
(Tangentially, I don't think it's exactly a blue-state/red-state divide [even in Texas, a very "red state", more than one in three people votes Democrat]. It's an urban/rural divide more than anything else.)
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No, it fucking isn't OK. I'm a decriminalisation advocate for ALL substances. So I'd love it if no one's mother had to do that, actually.
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OnPoint: Sock-Puppeting Big Tobacco to…, in reply to Sacha,
Because I don't want my retired mother visiting gang houses to pick up cigarettes?
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Hard News: Complaint and culture, in reply to B Jones,
Interestingly, my experience in RL among other newish parents is that we're all so sensitised to the furore, that we're all very very circumspect about not criticising when other people do things differently.
I've noticed this too. My coffee group folks and other friends varied widely in breastmilk/formula feeding patterns, for example, and I can't really think of one moment of out-of-turn public judgeypantsness. It's in the tubes where it really all goes... down the tubes.
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Jackie, Lilith, I'm afraid you have been assimilated by the PAS hivemind. David will consider your posts a frightening proof of exactly how brainwashed we all are.
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Hard News: Complaint and culture, in reply to B Jones,
I’d suggest you take two small squares of 180 sandpaper, two clothespegs, some string and a couple of weights and come back to us in an hour or so to talk about your valid experience.
This is fist-pumpingly awesome.
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Hard News: Complaint and culture, in reply to Danyl Mclauchlan,
My mother had twilight sleep to have me. In 1974. (In Venezuela. But still.)
Still? Really?
When people stop doing it, we can stop using the term. A winner all the way around!
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Hard News: Auckland City Nights, in reply to BenWilson,
Dude, they don't know how much I'm going to tip by looking at me!
I lived there for four years and I ate out a LOT. Smarm is the default.