The Evil Plan That Backfired: China Fears Baby Bust

Disastrous. So now Beijing is begging women to have babies. Who could have guessed that its cruel one-child policy of social engineering would have resulted in chaos, misery, human rights abuses, and now a feared "demographic time bomb"?  Who indeed, except anybody with any sense at all.

China to End One-Child Policy

Well, good, because it was a stupid, evil, destructive policy in both the short and long term that has caused untold amounts of human misery and social damage.

LOL: New Book Satirizes Overbearing NYC Parents

Mommie dearest.

Mamma Mia! 30 Best Fictional Parents

Atticus Finch et al!

Blood Is Thicker Than Politics

A timely reminder that humanity should > politics.

Satire Alert: "Siblings Gather Around PowerPoint To Hash Out Off-Limits Topics For Thanksgiving"

It's all the more hilarious because it's a little too close to the truth, isn't it?

Cheerios and Interracial Families

I totally didn't understand the controversy.  It's an adorable ad.  The family in it had a black dad and a white mom.  SO WHAT?  But apparently some jerks got their undies in a bunch about it online.  So here's the backlash to the backlash: the reminder that hey, interracial families exist.  Thank you: this has been your public service announcement.  In fact, a whole bunch of my friends have married someone of another race and are raising gorgeous interracial families.  Love should be color-blind.  Shall we also bring up the related topic of interracial adoptions?  Don't be a hater, man.

Mommie Dearest: Holiday Fun

It's Mother's Day, the holiday that raises mommy issues and familial guilt to a commercialized art form!  I have to say, though, that there's only so much I can take of seeing saccharine-sweet greeting cards, pastel bouquets, and recipes for "breakfast in bed."  (Of course, I'm a childless unmarried monster, so what do I know?  There's no holiday for us, haha.)

Anyway, since mom-child relationships are almost certainly a little conflicted, here's some hilarious perspective.  As complicated as those ties might be, they could have been a lot worse (language warning for one clip):

The Worst Movie Moms Ever from Flavorwire on Vimeo.

Yep, We're Screwed on Social Security

Basically, I've kissed goodbye to all that money that gets sucked out of my paycheck in the name of Social Security.  I'm never going to see those sweet little greenbacks again.  Bye, darlings!  Look, we all know that Social Security has become an unsustainable Ponzi scheme.  I'm fully expecting the whole rickety structure to have collapsed by the time I get to retirement age.  You'd have to be an economically illiterate idiot if you're my age and still thinking that you won't get totally screwed by this.  

On a personal note, I got into an argument with some elderly relatives not too long ago when Social Security came up in the conversation.  I did not - did not! - want to talk about it, but they kept on and on until finally I couldn't help myself anymore.  There's not going to be anything by the time I retire, I said.  I am flat-out assuming that I won't get any Social Security at all.  But the government promised!  they insisted.  You paid into it, so you have to get something out of it!  I gave up at that point.  How can you be so naive?  How can you be so baffled by the ideas that (a) my generation's going to get the shaft, and (b) the only smart thing to do is to plan ahead as if there won't be any Social Security?  

I knew better than to say that what I'm paying into the thing now is going toward the checks going out now, as in their checks.  Mama didn't raise no fool.

Now my peers and I gloomily wait to see if our pessimistic predictions will come true of the government raiding IRAs and 401(k)s and every other kind of savings so it can pay for its profligate, irresponsibly managed joyride.  Heck, it's like in those old cartoons when a hungry character looks at another character, and that second figure morphs into the image of a delicious roast chicken or something.

LOL: Brutally Honest Thanksgiving Commentary



Bringing Up Bebe

Forget the Tiger Mom! 

Irish Setter Dad: P.J. O'Rourke vs. the Tiger Mom

Oh, P.J.  How I do love you.

Satire Alert: Why Zombie Mothers Are Superior

I haven't really gotten into the whole "Hey, let's have a big Internet kerfuffle about Chinese moms!" because I frankly don't care.  I'd rather point you to a silly blog called High Expectations Asian Father and now to Dan Drezner's riff, "Why Zombie Mothers Are Superior."

Quote of the Day: Parenting and Common Sense in Politics

Read the whole thing:

I'm glad my children share my political orientation, but it bothers me when I hear them unthinkingly mock and dismiss the other side – as when my son recently said, "If Republicans want smaller government, they should quit their jobs in Congress."

Lately, I've found myself in the odd position of explaining and even justifying the conservative point of view on taxes, abortion, and regulation of private enterprise, just so my children will understand that people have reasons for their beliefs, even if we disagree.

... Contempt for the opposition may be profitable on talk radio, but it doesn't help the rest of us. All it accomplishes is to drive people further into their angry, fanatical corners.

This is the next political insight I'll be sharing with my kids.

Nerd Journal : Epic Filial Piety Fail

I just realized that it's my mom's birthday today and I forgot to send her a card.  Ugh.  (You know, of course, that I will now never hear the end of it, and she will use it as fresh ammunition in her maternal guilt-trip lectures.  So I am doubly screwed.)

Make It D'oh!

Nerd Journal: Hilarious Asian American Humor

Dude! I just stumbled across this hysterical website dedicated to making Internet-meme lolcat-like jokes about an Asian American stereotype (one that is too often ACTUALLY TRUE). The name of the website says it all: "High Expectations Asian Father."

OMG, I laughed and laughed. And, come on now, often we laugh at comedy because it contains enough truth in it to be recognizable!

Check this one out. Oh, I laughed out loud. I did.

A Little Shakespeare On Mother's Day For La Parisienne

All right, maybe I simply have a perverse and wicked sense of humor. On this Mother's Day, I give you the famous "queen's closet" scene from "Hamlet."

Mother's Day in Elsinore must have been murder!

The volcanic confrontation between Hamlet and his mother occurs in Act 3, Scene 4 (text here), and the performance is by the Royal Shakespeare Company, with David Tennant as Hamlet and Penny Downie as Queen Gertrude.

Take a look at the opening salvo:

Queen Gertrude: Why, how now, Hamlet!

Hamlet: What's the matter now?

Queen Gertrude: Have you forgot me?

Hamlet: No, by the rood, not so:
You are the queen, your husband's brother's wife;
And -- would it were not so! -- you are my mother.

What follows is either scenery-chewing melodrama (if performed badly) or (if done well) sublimely modulated personal trauma of a once-loving relationship now destroyed, and I wouldn't give you a bad performance. Pay attention to how Tennant can turn on a dime where wildly conflicting emotions are involved and swing back and forth from an almost demonic energy to near-total prostration; it's an impressive performance indeed. Downie's Gertrude is fantastic too.

Part One:




Part Two:

Public Service Announcement: CALL YOUR MOM!

Happy Mother's Day, everyone, from long-suffering moms to hard-working dads to all you filial sons and daughters.

Now stop reading this blog and go call your mother.

Moms to the Barricades! Protesting Government Overreach, Mother's Day Edition

Read this. The piece also contains this awesome quote from a mom:

Christen Varley, the Boston tea party leader [said:] "[we, mothers are] the CEO's of our households. We do the shopping, bill paying, budgeting, etc. We know less money means less freedom. Maybe if the president and Congress did the grocery shopping, they'd know why we're mad."

Go, Freedom Mommies!

Happy Father's Day: 20 Famous Fictional Dads

There is a list of 20 famous fathers.