Well, that was refreshing. Tiring, but ultimately refreshing. The lake is still there, as are the potholes. The drivers, I’m sorry to say, are not accustomed to seeing cyclists at this time of year. It made me wonder if I were run over and killed, if some cheesy local reporter would write, “Ironically, among her last words were a blog posting saying that she intended to ride her bicycle in the unseasonable January warmth.”
Sometimes it’s helpful to think like a journalist. Thinking of your life as a series of embarrassing headlines keeps you from doing many stupid things: MOM NABBED FOR SKINNY DIPPING, say.
OK, then.
So there was this giant butt in this morning’s newspaper. Go ahead, click the link and find the picture — I’ll wait. Back now? (Ha! Back now? I crack myself up.) That is, indeed, a very big, round, badunkadunk. Honestly? I think anyone given that particular serving of the genetic soup should treat it the way this girl is — proudly. I mean, it’s not like it’s something you can hide. And she does have a tiny little waist, eh?
I guess it goes without saying the woman is black. African American women have, I’ve notice, approximately 78 percent less anxiety over how fat they are at any given moment, for which I credit a famously curve-approving culture. (I mean, look at the list of big-butt songs with that story; do any of them say, “You’re a big fat butt-havin’ pig”? No.) If not fat-approving, certainly not fat-phobic.
I’d like to have that badunkadunk. For about a day. I wonder what it’s like to sit on — would it feel all cushiony? Any longer than 24 hours, though, I fear I’d start making mistakes, like knocking over endcap displays in grocery stores if I turned too fast. I’m sure you’d need a special operator’s license.
Enough of that.
I really was going to write about Mrs. Alito’s tears. Not the fact that she had some, which is unremarkable, really, but the reaction to them. There was some particular guffawing from one side and some really dishonest tut-tutting from the other. I mean: Really, REALLY dishonest. To read some of this crap — and I can’t even link to it, because it’s such …OK, here and here will show you a representative pair…requires you to turn off your brain. Totally. You have to forget that these are the folks who can’t stop talking about Hillary Clinton’s dykey lack of femininity and how about that Donna Shalala woof woof and of course there’s this by Kate O’Beirne:
I have long thought that if high-school boys had invited homely girls to the prom we might have been spared the feminist movement.
Note to everyone: When you talk like this, guess what, you don’t get to flutter your fan and get the vapors when people make fun of your nominee’s wife for crying at a public hearing where, heaven knows, no one ever says anything mean.
Is it Thursday already? It is. Have a good weekend.
Connie said on January 13, 2006 at 7:34 am
I would have put Queen’s “Fat Bottomed Girls They Make the Rocking World Go Round” on the list. Not positive enough to make the list?
And then there is my husband’s favorite, Pinetop Perkins’ “Big Fat Mama with the meat shakin on her bones.”
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Dorothy said on January 13, 2006 at 9:02 am
Isn’t there a polka ditty that says “I don’t want her, you can have her, she’s too fat for me”?
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basset said on January 13, 2006 at 9:06 am
sure is… and there’s an old blues, don’t know who wrote it, about “I loves my TV mama, the one with the big wiiiide screen…”
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brian stouder said on January 13, 2006 at 9:13 am
Well, I will say that it is very, very nice to spoon with a person who has a generously proportioned rear-end (I almost said “a full backside” but I didn’t like the implication) – and of course a person with a generously proportioned front end is very very nice to have spooning against oneself…so the anorexic look has never appealed to me in the least – and the anorexic-but-with-large-breasts look even less so (if she was behind you in bed, you’d have two bowling balls pressed against your back, and two fence posts scraping your legs)….
but I digress!
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Connie said on January 13, 2006 at 9:45 am
Yes Dorothy there certainly is. Would you like me to play it on my accordion for you? If I can find it in the basement that it.
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Mindy said on January 13, 2006 at 9:47 am
Once upon a time on this page there was linkage to the lyrics of Baby Got Back translated into Olde English or some such formalspeak. Hysterical. I passed it along to a guy who went to karaoke bars on occasion and usually took the stage to present Baby Got Back to the crowd. Imagine a tall skinny white blonde guy kicking the shit out this tune. It always got a laugh.
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Danny said on January 13, 2006 at 10:09 am
Connie, do you know what the difference is between an onion and an accordian? When someone cuts up an accordian, no one cries!
I got that one from an accordian website a few years back.
Folks, the diabetes-epidemic discussion yesterday and the fat-is-cool discussion today. Cognitive disconnect? I’m not saying that we all have to look like Adonis and Aphrodite, but … I dunno.
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Connie said on January 13, 2006 at 11:30 am
Danny you are so mean. Really, I picked up the accordion on a lark in my 30s, taught myself to play, played for fun for a couple of years and then put it away. I rarely reveal this so you should all feel most privileged. A few years ago we had a staff talent show as the after lunch entertainment at inservice day, and I (their boss) surprised them all when I opened the show by playing Edelweiss on the accordion. My employees were most impressed. Not that I could play, but that I would play for them.
Actually to tie this back in, some of them call me the big boss. But not for fat, more because I am their boss’s boss.
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Nance said on January 13, 2006 at 11:40 am
I’d argue the girl in the picture isn’t fat. She just carries the fat she has in a singular way.
That said, African Americans do have high rates of Type II diabetes. Granted.
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mary said on January 13, 2006 at 11:41 am
How about the song “Built for Comfort, Not for Speed?”
No matter how many miles I run a day, how low fat my diet is, I am never going to have a little bum. I’m ok with that, now. My next door neighbor, however, diet and yogas herself to death and has a huge ass and no boobs. When I meet people from the neighborhood and I tell them which house is mine, they say, “Oh you live next door to the woman with the huge ass.” It’s that remarkable.
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Danny said on January 13, 2006 at 11:50 am
Connie, I became intrigued with accordian a few years back when I was watching something like “Inside Studio 54” on KPBS. They featured the Assad brothers, two phenomenally talented classical guitarists playing with other well repected artists like YoYo Ma. In one part, they were playing with an accordian player and a flute player (or maybe it was Yo Yo Ma, I forget). What a cool collaboration that was!
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mary said on January 13, 2006 at 12:12 pm
Referring back a few days ago to the font discussion:
I got a resume today from an extremely good job candidate. Good experience, good education etc. Not a badly written resume. But it’s in Monotype Corsiva. Aaargh. I changed the whole thing to Times New Roman, but why on earth would someone make their resume so annoying looking?
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Nance said on January 13, 2006 at 12:17 pm
The WHOLE thing in Monotype Corsiva? Good lord. Maybe s/he doesn’t want to be hired.
Re the accordion: While in Argentina we heard lots and lots of tango music, which of course uses the bandoleon as a principle instrument. When I referred to it as “the baby accordion” I nearly got my head bitten off by a B.A. native.
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mary said on January 13, 2006 at 2:02 pm
Yo yo Ma has a whole cd of tango music called Soul of the Tango, The Music of Astor Piazzolla. Astor was a composer and bandoleon player held in very high esteem. It’s a very good cd. Great to cook by.
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basset said on January 13, 2006 at 2:04 pm
nobody in the music world takes more grief than accordion players…
except banjo players.
and I suspect a lot of the banjo jokes were originally aimed at the accordion.
know how you get a banjo player off your porch?
pay for the pizza and shut the door.
what do you call a banjo player who just split up with his girlfriend?
homeless.
what’s the difference between a banjo player and a large pizza?
the pizza can feed a family of three.
and so on.
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Danny said on January 13, 2006 at 2:18 pm
What is the heaviest element in the periodic table? Banjonium, used to make banjos. (for you chemists, it’s probably in the ignoble metal family)
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brian stouder said on January 13, 2006 at 2:26 pm
Appropos of nothing – this sounds like a fun person!
from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10753452/site/newsweek/
“Maria Dahvana Headley grew up listening to the “Just Say No” anti-drug campaign of the 1980s. As a student at New York University in the late ’90s, she applied that advice to her love life, turning down most men who asked her out and dating only intellectual, literary types. Frustrated by those guys, she reversed course, resolving to spend one year responding positively to all flirting and saying yes to literally anyone who asked her out. The ensuing 150 dates included a homeless man, several non-English speakers, 10 taxi drivers, two lesbians and a mime.”
Hollywood is already calling, too!
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Laura said on January 13, 2006 at 3:13 pm
Re: big butts and diabetes. As a health reporter (who also happens to have one, but not the both of the aforementioned *conditions*) I can tell you a big butt poses little health risk. It’s the big gut you have to worry about.
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brian stouder said on January 13, 2006 at 3:19 pm
“It’s the big gut you have to worry about.” – yes –
I seem to recall reading you want your proportions to be akin to a Coke bottle (maybe even a big gulp) but NOT a pair
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mary said on January 13, 2006 at 7:53 pm
I think for women it’s looking like a pear, not an apple, that’s desirable related to risk of stroke and heart disease. All the women in my family are definitely ripe Bartletts, maybe D’Anjous. No heart disease or stroke in the whole clan. A few were like those magical pears in the bottles of Poire Williams Eau de Vie, though. Soaked in alcohol.
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Nance said on January 13, 2006 at 8:25 pm
You funny, Mary.
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Connie said on January 14, 2006 at 1:03 pm
Today one of my husband’s buddies emailed him a video of two naked extremely (extremely!) fat women shaking their booty. It was creepy. Not the kind of butts to which the article referred. And not nearly as funny with as the one with naked large breasted women shooting machine guns. Where does he find these friends? Let’s just say old army buddies.
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brian stouder said on January 14, 2006 at 4:57 pm
I wondered back to where the techies reside (at my workplace) and saw a video of a naked female athlete doing uneven parallel bars, and vaults and flips. As skimpy and form-fitting as their uniforms are to begin with , it was surprisingly unremarkable….except for when she was getting her running start toward the vaults!
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brian stouder said on January 14, 2006 at 4:58 pm
make that “wandered”.
btw – I can see flickr pictures on the revamped site, but I cannot see the nightstand list
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