Category: Hilariously Misbegotten i-Yuppie Pretences
Description: Regarding the character-forming utility of bedtime stories (if you’ve been using them to bond with and/or get Offspring to simmer down before tucking them in, you’re aiming way too low)…
“The more stories children hear, and the more varied and substantial those tales, the greater the confidence of their cultural ownership. They will recognize allusions that other children may miss. A girl who has heard the stories of Aesop or Jean de la Fontaine will have a clear idea of what is meant by “sour grapes” and will know why people compare the industriousness of ants and grasshoppers. A boy who’s heard a parent read The Odyssey* has a more complete idea of what constitutes a “siren song” than his friend who thinks it must have something to do with an alarm going off.”
Notes: And let’s not forget the collected works of Krafft-Ebing…
“Children get a wider perspective when they’re tugged out of the here and now for a little while each day. In an enchanted hour, we can read them stories of the real and imagined past. With picture-book biographies we can acquaint them with people we want them to know: Josephine Baker and Amelia Earhart, Julius Caesar and Marco Polo, Martin Luther King Jr. and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, George Patton and Shaka Zulu, Pocahontas, Frida Kahlo, Edward Hopper, William Shackleton, the Savage of Aveyron, and the terrible Tudors.”
Notes: “Shaka Zulu” I get but what patronizingly PC sub-demographic target requirement does “the Savage of Aveyron” meet? And please direct us to the General George S. Patton fairy tale, it sounds delightful.
“With any luck, our children will come to appreciate that the people of generations past were as full of life, intelligence, wisdom, and promise as they are, and impelled by the same half-understood desires and impulses; that those departed souls were as good and bad and indifferent as people who walk the earth today.”
Notes: Well why the Hell else would I read Blockhead Hans to a three-year-old?
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Category: Eyebrows Lifted
Description: As Advertized by an Au Pair Service (as the Ad itself instructs: see photo)
“HELGA” – see photo
Described as “responsible, respectful, neat and organized”
Loves being part of a family and seeing the milestones in the children’s lives.
A confident, warm young woman – and also a strong musician!
Age 19, Germany
Notes: Saw photo. “Milestones”…. as in? Divorce? Bitter custody battles? A young master’s virginity relinquished? Hypothetically, I mean.
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Category: YouTube Parenting Bragging-Tips Given vs Bragging-Tips Received
Description: The Magic of Childhood from Diverging Perspectives
My youngest child IS the only child in the world that does all of the things he says kids never do. Gets herself ready, goes to bed at 830 every night without being told, LOVES broccoli, is always ready on time etc. She’s 7. And she freaks my husband and I out.
likes: 349
Hahahahaa this was me as a child, then I hit 13 and I got suspended from high school, use to steal alcohol, started smoking, was sucking dick at 14, sneaking out, smoking weed at 15, at 16 got expelled from another school, experimented with party drugs, and oh yeah had a baby by 17. My poor poor parents and that’s not even including all the mental issues. Luckily the guy I got with at 16 was a decade older than me and straightened me out, had a baby and got married in a year and now life is great at 20. I swear my parents did not see that all coming and they’re still shocked
likes: 21
Notes: You’ve got 7 years to keep broccoli in the pole position, Mom.
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CATEGORY: Genius vs Dunning-Kruger Effect vs Semantics
DESCRIPTION: Super-Intellectual Psychology Today Takes on Philosophical Truism and Wrestles it to the Mat in Record Time
“Can’t prove a negative? Sure you can!”
by Stephen Law Ph.D.
“If John claims there’s a unicorn in the tool shed, I can quickly establish he is mistaken by going and taking a look.”
Notes: Um…
“Of course, those who say “You can’t prove a negative” will insist that I have misunderstood their point”
Notes: Um…
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Category: Worse than Google Glass
Description: The competition for Arts Grants is brutal
“This artist puts a camera inside her vagina and takes photos of her lovers”
notes: ________________
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*No, wait, honestly. I still can’t get over this. The fucking Odyssey?
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BONUS: UN-BEAR-ABLE
In the Berlin I always valued, you could be dead-broke and still have a wildly overbooked anti-authoritarian social life centered around lots of non-binding Schrippen-fueled sex; this cinematic vision of a Yuppie Mating Backdrop seems like a memo regarding phase 2 of their municipal terraforming protocol (as soon as that airport gets fixed….). The “air-punching” soundtrack of the trailer is included to disable you with nausea. While nauseated you will agree to anything… just to make it stop. Let me show you my Berlin (unzips)…
THE IMPERIALIST 