Don’t mess with Gandalf. She’ll cut you, man…

Tuki is furious at a boy in her class. His sin? He has dissed Gandalf.

Yes, this boy has had the effrontery to insist strongly that Harry Potter is a better wizard than Gandalf. I won’t go into the details, mostly because I wasn’t really listening, but she is seriously reconsidering the prospects of any sort of long term friendship with this boy.

Also, he doesn’t know who Mace Windu is. She has informed him that he simply cannot be a proper geek if he doesn’t even know his Star Wars canon. I didn’t point out to her that Episodes 1-3 are rather the New Testament of Star Wars. Or the Book of Mormon. She was far too caught up in her disdain to listen to the finer points of distinction. I forgot to tell her to ask him who shot first. The wrong answer to that one might justify shunning.

I think she is particularly disappointed because this is a boy with whom she bonded over Dr. Who. He has the distinction of having actual British parents. His birthday party at school was looked forward to for weeks. They got to have fish and chips at lunch. Fish fingers and custard would have been cuter, but less edible. She was a bit put off by the deep fried Oreo they had for dessert, though. I haven’t had the heart to break it to her yet that British cuisine is not all high tea and digestive biscuits. She has yet to experience the horror of a boiled dinner and trifle.

Anyhow, she is annoyed because not only is he obviously and patently wrong about Gandalf (I have assured her that this is, indeed, the case), but he refuses to let it go. In the traditional fashion of 10 year old boys everywhere, he insists on going on and on about it. And using such tried and true forms of rhetoric as, “Gandalf is a big dummy.”

So after agreeing with her that not only is he simply wrong, but that he was using bad arguments, I did point out to her that he was almost certainly just trying to keep her attention. Because she is pretty. She paused for a moment and then said, “Yeah, I sorta figured that out.”

“IT IS SO ANNOYING!”

I told her that she had best get used to it, because it was going to be something she will have to cope with until she is at least 45. Being a card carrying geek isn’t enough to get out of it, I’m afraid. You just attract a slightly better class of admirer. If somewhat less well groomed.

Then she asked the question of the ages. “Why are boys so STUPID???!!!???”

Oh my dear, if I only knew the answer to that one…

I like tea

I have a microwave in my bedroom. Honestly, I don’t know why everyone doesn’t. I can’t imagine how I survived for so long without one. Now the reason I have a microwave in the bedroom is that when we moved in I already had a microwave, and this apartment came with one. So we had two. This apartment also has two floors. My bedroom is upstairs. The kitchen is downstairs.

I like tea.

I like tea a rather lot actually. Sadly I like tea in a way that tea snobs shudder at. If you’ve ever been to a dedicated tea shop, you have met a tea snob. They are the ones who explain how the pot should be rinsed with hot water first, and you use just EXACTLY this much tea… and the water should be cold before it goes into the kettle (preferably bottled mineral water from an alpine spring), and then heated to exactly this temperature, and then the tea is steeped for exactly this long and blah blah blah…

I make tea in the microwave.

I take the cup that I keep in my bedroom and I briefly rinse the remaining tea dregs out of it with the bathroom tap. Then I fill it up with water. From the tap. Sometimes it is cold water, sometimes it is warmish. I don’t particularly care. I put the cup of water in the microwave (in my bedroom), toss in a tea bag from the box I keep on top of the microwave, hit the quick start button three times to get a minute and a half, and I’m done.

When I say I’m done, sometimes I am actually done. As in I manage to forget during that minute and a half that I actually made tea. Generally I am reminded by the beeping, but I usually don’t run over to take it out right away because it is too hot. And then I forget. Sometimes I forget for so long that I forget that I’ve even made tea. At some point I will think to myself, “I want tea” and I will look for my cup. Desk? No. Beside table? No. Bathroom sink? No.

I have learned that the inability to spot the cup generally means that it is in the microwave already.

Full of tea.

Sometimes the tea is still warm. Sometimes it is not. Either way my response is the same. Toss the teabag and drink it anyway.

I think you really really have to like tea to take a sip of a cup in which the teabag has been steeping for 12 hours and think, “That’ll do.”

Pansy tea snobs.

 

Isn’t she lovely?

My daughter asked me the other day if there are things about myself physically that I would want to change (other than my hair color, obviously). Naturally the first thing out of my mouth was, “Yes, lots.”

Naturally I regretted that immediately, but I do try to be honest with my kids.

Now, being Tuki, she had to know WHAT I would change. That girl is like a terrier with a bone when she gets her teeth into a topic. She has the eyes of an eagle for spotting when you want to change the subject too. Basically a pan-animal chimera that feeds off of parental squirming and coffee candy. So I carefully avoided all topics related to weight, since I really don’t want to introduce THAT particular societal evil before it absolutely MUST be addressed, but I had to admit to something. I told her that when I was in Junior High I desperately wanted a smaller nose, but that I don’t care so much anymore. Amazingly she let it go at that, but then my mommy heart broke into tiny pieces when she said she also really wants a smaller nose. And “better eyebrows”.

Better eyebrows?

I asked what on earth better eyebrows were, and she said that she wanted them to be shaped better and “not all scraggly”. We were pulling in to the garage by then, so I merely suggested that if she really cares particularly she can pluck them. That was not really appealing to the girl who can’t bear the slightest pain, so we pretty much left it at that.

But it ate at me.

My daughter is nine. I want to scream that she should not care about her eyebrows, but I know that is not particularly helpful. But the thing is, she is also heartbreakingly beautiful. We are not talking mom-thinks-I’m-beautiful pretty. We are talking strangers come up to her to tell her how pretty she is, and then sometimes give her things, pretty. She is slender and has gorgeous long long hair and startlingly pretty eyes. She has a sweet enough smile, but she has a truly awe inspiring scowl. And a glare to die for. So I honestly thought maybe I’d get to dodge a bullet  with feminine insecurity. I mean if and when she decides to choose a gender to be attracted to, appropriate members of said selected gender will most likely spend their nights perched on our back fence, like cats, just waiting to shower her with adulation.

I’m going to need to buy a better hose.

Of course it matters less than not at all what your mom thinks of you, because our opinions are suspect. It should only matter what you think of yourself, but that is a pitted road to perdition of its own. We are our own worst critics. Most women have a psychotic clown that lives in their brain and tells them over and over, in graphic and minute detail, every one of their failings since kindergarten. Or maybe that is just me, but I strongly suspect that it isn’t. I had hoped that the clown wouldn’t be moving in with my daughter quite so soon. I kinda thought they came with menstruation, but maybe this is a training model. Like a training bra. It is practice torture.

So after I had over thought it to death, I finally went and told her that she does not need to worry about being pretty. I reminded her how many times people compliment her eyes, or her hair, or just her. I told her that by any objective measure she is drop dead gorgeous. And then I told her that THAT is the least interesting thing about her. I reminded her that she is brilliant. That she is always at the top of her class without even trying. I reminded her that she is an amazing artist. That she is better than I was at her age, and may in fact be better than I am now. I reminded her that she plays three musical instruments, and even sings beautifully when she forgets that anyone is listening. She is funny and droll and dark and cynical and geeky and worldly and she STILL loves My Little Pony. I reminded her that she gives the best hugs in the world.

Someday someone outside of her family is going to realize all of these things. It is likely that many people will, and that many hearts will be broken. Some of those people may experience the stress of her regard. But one thing I would be willing to lay bets on…

No one is going to care about the shape of her eyebrows.

A Typical Morning

**NOTE** I have been asked to stress that the following is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any children, living or dead, is purely coincidental, and not to be interpreted, in any way, as representational of the behavior of my particular children. My children are never this chatty in the morning.

 

Only SLIGHTLY exaggerated…

Child 1:Where’s my belt?

Me (while brushing child 2′s hair and helping her put on tights that she can somehow only manage for herself on weekends.): I have no fucking idea. Where did you leave it.

Child 1: I dunno.

Me: Do you remember taking it off?

Child 1: No.

Me: Did you look in your room?

Child 1 (without moving in any way): Yes.

Me: Have you tried looking around?

Child 1 (without visibly moving either head or eyes): Yes! I’ve looked everywhere!

I put hairbrush in Child 2′s hand which causes her to lapse into complete stasis.

Me: Fine. I’ll look… You’re standing on it.

Child 1: Oh. Thanks.

In car on way to school…

Me (to Child 1): I got another email about your late library book. It’s been six months. Where is it?

Child 1: It’s in my locker. I think. I’m almost completely sure it is in my locker.

Me: Please look for it and return it today.

Child 1: Okay, sure. Only… the library is on the other floor, and I might not have time. Plus I think the library is closed on Tuesdays.

Me: It is Thursday. Also why would the library be closed on Tuesdays?

Child 1: And Thursdays. I think. I’m pretty sure somebody told me that once.

Me: How about you walk up there and check? And bring the book with you?

Child 1: I will definitely try to remember to do that. You know you aren’t supposed to turn left to the school here, right? You are supposed to turn six blocks back and follow the traffic pattern of ever decreasing spirals so as to approach the school from the southwest ONLY because the school made an agreement with the neighbors.

Me: I don’t give a crap. We are already late, and if the school doesn’t want me to turn left, they can put up a bloody sign.

Child 1: It is your fault if I am never accepted to college because the school hates you.

Me: Great. We are here. I’m slowing down. Tuck and roll.

Ten minutes later on arriving at Child 2′s school.

Child 2: Where is my homework?

Me: You told me you didn’t have homework. You told me that you NEVER have homework on Wednesdays and if I asked you about having homework on a Wednesday ONE MORE TIME you would die of frustration, shame and embarrassment, because it will be proof that I have Alzheimer’s.

Child 2: Not THAT homework. The project.

Me: You mean the project from Tuesday night? The one that you were supposed to be working on for six months but you only mentioned to me while brushing your teeth for the night? The one that was due yesterday?

Child 2: Yes. You didn’t put it in my backpack.

Me: Actually, I DID put it in your backpack. After we stayed up for four extra hours Tuesday night finishing it I most certainly DID put it in your backpack. And I told you “I am putting this in your backpack. Look at me right now and see where I am putting it so that you may turn it in on time when you get to school.” We are talking about THAT homework project?

Child 2: Yes. It isn’t here. I looked and LOOKED.

Me: Why would it be there when you were supposed to turn it in yesterday?

Child 2: Only it turned out it wasn’t due yesterday because the teacher said. So I didn’t turn it in yesterday.

Me: Why not? It was done.

Child 2: The teacher said.

Me: Well, then it should still be there. I did not touch it. Did you take it out?

Child 2: No! Only I needed a pencil, so I took everything out to look for one, so it MUST be at home and you need to go get it or I will die.

Me: Ah. Actually, I did see the contents of your backpack strewn about the kitchen floor last night, so I put everything back in the backpack that I saw. Let me look… See, here’s a cat toy. But… No Project. Is it in your desk?

Child 2: It is absolutely impossible that it would be in my desk because I never put anything in my desk except decorative erasers shaped like small animals and food items.

Me: How about I come up and look before driving home to find it?

Child 2 (on the brink of tears): I am 100% certain it is not in my desk. If I set one toe on school property without my homework then I will have to join the witness protection program. And then die.

Me: And yet, I am coming in to look.

Ten minutes of foot dragging later we arrive at said desk.

Me: Isn’t this your homework? Right here? On top of the permission slip I signed and gave you on the first day of school so that you would legally be allowed to breathe oxygen on school grounds? Why don’t you just turn those both in right now.

Child 2: I can’t. If we turn things in before the teacher says it is time to turn them in, we die.

Me: Fine. Whatever. Now my phone is ringing.

Child 1 (on phone): You forgot to tell me to put on shoes this morning, so I just have on socks and the office says it is a violation of the uniform code so you have to come pick me up right now and bring me home to get shoes and then drop me off again 20 minutes ago. Or I’ll die.

Okay, that is a teensy bit of an exaggeration. Because it generally doesn’t ALL happen on the same morning.

But it FEELS true.

Mother Mary full of grace, help me find a parking space

I have a lot of friends who are atheists, but most of them aren’t atheists like me. I was actually raised this way. I NEVER went to church, any church. When I was little I was aware that there was such a thing, but it seemed so ridiculous as to be, quite literally, beyond belief. In preschool I had a friend who was a Jehovah’s Witness, which didn’t matter very much to me until I learned that this meant that in order to invite her to my birthday party my mom had to put on all the invitations “Please do not bring presents.” I’ve since learned that she also did this because several of my friends were too poor to bring me presents, but at the time I blamed it on the Jehovah’s Witnesses. This is really the only way I can now explain the following incident.

When I was little I was so shy that at least one teacher thought I was autistic. I did NOT speak to people, particularly adults. Plenty of parents at the preschool thought I COULDN’T talk, and they tended to get a big surprise if and when I would suddenly turn and speak to them in complete sentences. When, on her first day of school, Miss Tuki told her teacher that A was for antidisestablishmentarianism, I was proud not JUST for producing a little smart-ass, but for passing something along. Something lasting.

But anyway. It so came to pass that my little Jehovah’s Witness friend whose name has passed into the abyss of memory must have told her parents that she had a friend who didn’t believe in God, or didn’t go to church, or something. And they must have told their Jehovah’s Witness Juju Witch Doctor (I’m not clear on the terminology of the sect), who was concerned enough to COME TO OUR HOUSE. My mom was apparently pissed and upset when this perfect stranger showed up and demanded that they take me to church. My dad has always been harder to rattle, and just told the man to ask me what I wanted. By all rights and historical averages this should have gone badly. The chances should have overwhelmingly favored my hiding behind my mother’s leg and crying. But it has passed into the family lore that this is not what happened at all. I am told that four year old me calmly told the man, “No. I don’t believe in God.” And he went away.

To be fair, I don’t remember it at all. And my dad has never been one to let facts get in the way of a good story, but my mom confirms it, so I am guessing it is at least mostly true. I do remember being a first grader who was not shy about denouncing theism to anyone who got in my face about it. I was quite an absolutist when I was seven. I remember because it very nearly got me beat up by one girl named (deliciously) Romy, in a miniature playground version of the Spanish Inquisition. I was saved by having a much older friend who let it be known that I was under her protection, but even she was confused by my rabid anti-theism. I thought that this was utterly unfair as she was the one who had told me at five that there was no Santa, which was a far more tangible and believable idea than Jesus in my mind. Santa actually gave you stuff. So far as I could tell Jesus just made you get up early on the weekend.

Anyhow, if the theists had just been content to leave me alone I probably never would have cared very much what it was that they got up to when they gathered for their weekly chanting or snake handling or whatever it WAS that they got up to, but they never DO leave one alone. I went to public school from kindergarten through college, and I never once attended a graduation ceremony without a Christian prayer in it. I was acutely aware of being required, every day, to recite what amounted to a prayer witnessed by Yahweh to worship an idol made up of red, white and blue cotton. Although to be fair it WAS the 70′s, so the flag was likely made of polyester.

So I developed an interest. There was never a moment when I was tempted to actually believe any of it. It was always too obvious to me that the conflicting sects were just that, conflicting. I couldn’t see any compelling reason to choose any one faith over another. They all seemed equally made up to me, but on the whole the Judeo-Christian angry desert god was probably the least appealing. The Greek and Norse gods had better stories, and the Native Americans had talking animals. Coyote has a sense of humor. Yahweh is just a jealous ass. I drifted in and out of agnosticism, not because I actually thought any of it was literally true, but I could see that there could conceivably be more under heaven and earth than was dreamt of in my philosophy. Eventually I settled on the idea that I would just live by my own conscience and if it turned out that I was somehow wrong, and that one of these myriad imaginary friends was actually real, then they would have to just accept my best or they wouldn’t be worth worshipping anyway.

Along the way to that decision, though, I read a lot about religion. And it is fascinating as a cultural artifact. I’m sure that those in the faith based community will see my interest as a longing of the soul, a sort of pressing of the nose against the window of a restaurant whilst shivering and starving on a snowy January. Assuming they are capable of thinking beyond a prurient delight and anticipation of a sinner’s future punishment. (Don’t blame ME if that is how you seem to those of us on the outside. I don’t make you act the way you do.) But from my point of view it is more like peering through the windows of an asylum. Or in many cases a 19th century textile factory. Because SOMEBODY is getting rich off of this crap, and it is surely not the toiling masses inside.

That reminds me. I had a point when I started this… now what was it? Oh yeah. So given that I have an interest, and a bit of education, and like to look at things in a historical context, I was talking to my husband today about the concept of the Trinity. I find the Trinity hilarious. It is such an obvious software patch. How do you move from the old testament  idea of “no gods BEFORE me” to the idea that there is only one god, but still reconcile worship of Jesus as the son of said god. Well, you can’t unless you come up with a theological mind pretzel in which the father and the son are both separate and entire, with a holy ghost thrown in because three is just a much more emotionally satisfying number. Plus otherwise if you leave it at just two (but still one), they might fight it out. And we can’t have that. So the Nicenes get it all worked out in a way that is too complicated for anyone to really make sense out of, and then just yell “Faith!” Plus it works out really well for a professional priest class, because if you make it too complicated for the masses they are more likely to just go along with whatever you say. “Well, I don’t really get it, but that must be cuz I’m not as smart and holy and educated as y’all are. Here’s some money.”

Me? Jaded? We knew that. Moving along.

Because here’s a really funny part. Once they worked out a way to worship more than one god at a time without worshipping more than one god at a time, the Catholics blithely moved along to the most amazing proliferation of idol worship one can imagine. Got boils? There’s a saint for that! Just tell us your problem and we will supply a gilded statue for you to light a candle to. And the candles are quite reasonably priced. Want something a bit more heavenly than some guy who lit himself on fire for his faith 200 years ago so that he could spend the afterlife curing gout or overseeing the accuracy of the Russian nuclear weapons program? No problem. You can worship angels. There is a wide range of angels. You have your cherubim and seraphim, your dominions, your virtues, your powers. You can have an angry angel of vengeance with a flaming sword. You can have a cute, fat baby angel… for no apparent reason at all that I can tell.

But my favorites are the Marians. If you are feeling a bit shy about going directly to God with your petty problems… and Jesus? Well, he just seems so BUSY these days… why not call up Mary? She is much more down to earth. Or at least she WAS, before bodily ascending into heaven. Basically she seems to be the Holy Receptionist. She will listen sympathetically. And maybe, if he’s in a good mood, she’ll pass it along to her boss. Plus if it is just a little thing, she might be able to just take it out of petty cash and handle it herself. She understands how these things go, cuz she is a mom. But, like all good secretaries, she is also a virgin. Completely devoted to the Big Guy. But totally tapped in to all the gossip. Want to just bypass the regular channels? Call Mary, she’ll hook you up.

So yeah… religion.

I’m sure there is an ap for that.

Imagine there’s no Heaven

So I blame it all on Jim Wright.

First he wrote a blog entry on racism that turned my stomach and made me realize that no matter how much I think I am a jaded, bitter, bitch who can never be surprised at the foul reality of stupid people today… I am a sheltered San Franciscan naif who knows not the depths to which they can stoop. Or slither. Or tunnel. I couldn’t even look at half the shit he referenced. Because I am afraid that no matter how bad I might think they will be (and then mentally double it for insurance), I expect that the reality is worse.

But that is what Jim does, and he does it very well.

But then, because I am sortof a fangirl of his, I was looking at his Facebook page on Thanksgiving while the bread was baking and he made a reference to an old WKRP in Cincinnati episode where they drop the turkeys from the helicopter. Which is not only one of the best moments of that show, but possibly one of the funniest moments on TV evar! So I had to find it online and watch it again. And post it on Facebook so everybody else could watch it again. And it got me thinking about how good that show was, and how it was a predecessor to current shows like Parks and Rec, and how maybe the kids would like it. Which naturally made me look to see if it was available on DVD. (The answer is a disappointing sort of, in that it is there, but cut and redubbed with bad alternative music because of rights issues. Which sucks.)

But anyway, I was thinking about the show and that got me to thinking about other moments in the show that were awesome. And I remembered the one where the intolerant preacher was trying to get the station to censor itself, and at the end Mr. Carlson quoted John Lennon’s “Imagine” to him and asked if that song should be censored. Or course he said yes, and then Mr. Carlson said that the song only asked one to IMAGINE no heaven, and basically threw the guy out.

I was about 10 years old when I saw that episode. Give or take. Now naturally I was also ME at the time, so there was no real question about which side of the issue I came down on. But the thing is that there was no real question about which side most people watching the show came down on. And since this was the late 70′s and there wasn’t much to watch, pretty much everybody watched everything that was on. I don’t know about the nation as a whole, but it seemed to me at the time that, Moral Majority notwithstanding, MOST of us were moving in the right direction. It seemed like bigotry and censorship and such idiocy were dying out. It seemed pretty settled. From my little vantage point in the redwoods of northern California it was apparent that although there was a long way to go, we were at least on the path.

Lately I look around and I’m wondering what happened. I mean most people I know, most people I like or interact with in any way have come down the path with me. But it seems like a whole lot of people not only didn’t come along, they walked the other way. And dug a moat. And stocked it with alligators.

Also they seem to have bred more than we did. And homeskoold there childern.

And somebody let them on the internet. Dammit. How did THAT happen?

So there is this vast mass of people over on the other side of that moat, and they keep lobbing Bibles at us. Bibles that seem to be written in ALL CAPS without spellcheck, or a basic grasp of grammar. And seem to contain whole passages of Ayn Rand. And apparently the Bible contains a lot of verses about Nazis. Nazis who were also communists. AND socialists. Or something. I admit I only read the Bible once in college at UC Santa Cruz, so that was probably not a very accurate copy of the King James… so maybe I am remembering it wrong, but I don’t remember a single bit about Hitler. I thought I remembered something about Jesus loving poor people, but that was probably the commie propaganda the leftist liberal elite professors put in.

So they are over there. And they seem to have most of the guns. And it is scary and sad and makes me wonder if we are heading back into the dark ages.

And then I think maybe it is just the death throes of the beast. There may not be a LOT more of us than there are of them, but there do seem to be a few more. And there are a whole lot of people… sortof on the banks. Folks who may not be comfortable with coming all the way… but who REALLY don’t like the thought of being one of the crazies either. And it makes me hope. Just a little. Because the louder they get, and the bigger and more elaborate their tinfoil hats are, maybe it will make enough other people just want to walk AWAY! Slowly, so they don’t get pelted with dung, but away.

Because hey, I’ve got kids too. And they are not only sane, they can spell.

All you hippie kids! Get off my lawn!

They make you feel so bad and grinchy, like you are kicking a puppy or something. With their big sad eyes looking at you like you are deliberately harshing their buzz, or taking the magic out of the world. Well, okay I am imagining the big sad eyes part because it is the internet and I can’t really see them. But still.

I am not going to stop though. They can unfriend me and take me off their damn mailing lists if they want to. If they send me an email thread about the latest (or usually circa 2003 NOT so latest) health scare I WILL send them back the snopes link saying it is full of crap. I don’t care if they are over 60 and not really clear on the concept of email alerts that have been circulating for over a decade. I don’t care if they are someone’s Nanna. Somebody has to stop the madness, and maybe they will learn to check things out before blindly sending them along. Okay. Probably not, but maybe they will learn to stop sending them to me. If I get fewer cute baby animal emails (complete with the exhortation to forward to 10 people and see something COOL! I tried it, and it really works! My cousin didn’t, and died in a ball of flaming hellfire the very next day! Seriously!) then that is a price I am willing to pay.

Canola oil is not going to make your skin split open. The fact that it is made from the rape seed is a linguistic oddity, not a plot. They changed the name for marketing reasons, not to make everyone consume mustard gas.

NO ONE needs to drink so much water every day that they can never be more than 10 feet from a toilet. Feeling thirsty does not mean you are on the brink of death from dehydration. It means you are thirsty. If any animal evolved so that it could only be healthy if it never left the water hole, the lions would totally win. 8 glasses of water a day may be a shrewd marketing move by the bottled water people (and the lions), but it doesn’t make any SENSE!

There is no rapist in the back seat of your car. Just like the couple making out by the lake never found a hook hand hanging off of their bumper. Sorry.

But all this is NOTHING compared to Facebook. I try to be nice. I do. But people persist in reposting every damn shiny thing they see. Funny stuff is great (all hail George Takei!), and I can even deal with the motivational self-helpy stuff. Not MY thing, but whatever, we all know I’m jaded and bitter and destined to die complaining to my cats about politics. It is the new-agey, pseudo-science, EASILY FACT CHECKED stuff that makes me… not as nice as I should be.

I’ll give a ferinstance. A picture of a bunch of berries. All kinds. Blueberries, blackberries, raspberries mostly… and there is a caption. It reads: Grow your vaccinations! The word “vaccine” comes from “vaccinium” which is latin for berry!

There are a lot of implications to this adorable, and many would say harmless little memelet. Vaccines are bad! Big Pharma is out to kill you, and probably give your children autism. Natural cures are the best cures, and our ancestors who were in tune with nature knew this! Live off the grid and don’t poison your children with nasty vaccines! Give them wholesome berries instead. Don’t buy into the corporate lie. Those studies that claim no link between vaccines and autism? (All of them, really, except for the one that has been debunked by… everybody.) Those studies are lies bought and paid for by THE MAN. Owned by Pfizer and Monsanto, all of them. Don’t believe me? Sheeple.

Okay, maybe I’m reading a lot into it. But it is actually, completely and factually wrong. It so happened that I had been reading fairly recently about smallpox, you see, and I happened to be aware that the word “vaccine” does come from the latin. It comes from “Vaccinia” which is latin for of, or relating to, cows. Vaccinia is the latin name for cowpox. Cowpox happens to give the infected a partial immunity to its close cousin smallpox, and it was the discovery of this by Edward Jenner in the late 1700′s that lead to the first widespread use of inoculation against disease. Because of the use of the vaccinia virus to inoculate against the far more deadly smallpox (Variola Major), inoculations came to be known as vaccines. Vaccinium, so far as I was able to tell, was an archaic latin term for a specific kind of berry, and it came to be used as a genus name for a family of berry producing shrubs, one of which is the modern blueberry. The similarity to vaccinia (and therefore vaccine) is a linguistic coincidence. Sort of like those rape seeds some people get so concerned about.

My point here is that it took me less than two minutes to look this up.

My other point is that if you feed your children raspberries (which aren’t even IN the genus vaccinium! Come on people!), they will not harm your children. They are a healthy treat unless the little seeds get caught below the gum line. I really hate that. BUT they will NOT do a damn thing to protect them from whooping cough. Now the chances are that your berry eating little rugrats will still be safe from whooping cough, but only because the rest of us vaccinated our damn kids. If enough new age, science distrusting, homeopathic parents turn to fruit salad and skip the injections, guess what? We start getting outbreaks of those diseases no one gets anymore. Just like we have been. And if we get enough outbreaks, those pesky little viruses may evolve enough resistance to put everybody at risk. Viruses like to do that. They are good at it.

Now you may be thinking I am against herbal medicine. I’m not. Mostly. What I am against is people who think it is magic. The active ingredients in herbal remedies are drugs. That is where most of our drugs came from in the first place. And they are just as potent and effective and DANGEROUS as anything you get from your pharmacist. I am all for the knowledgeable and judicious use of them. Now I will tell you what I see as the problems. One: plants vary, so the amount of active ingredient in one plant can be vastly different from the amount in another. Two: the supplement industry is mostly unregulated, so dosage may or may not be constant from manufacturer to manufacturer or even from batch to batch. Three: the term “supplement” covers a wide range of products, and includes such snake oil as “homeopathic medicine”. Four: the people selling these products tend to be very well meaning but are often completely untrained. This last is particularly dangerous when it comes to drug interaction. There seems to be a pervasive idea that herbs are natural and therefore safe. When my stepfather was dying of a brain tumor, and had recently had brain surgery, a VERY well meaning worker at the health food store tried to sell him a product containing willow bark. He had been warned not to take any blood thinners or he could have bleeding in his brain. When my mother protested to her that willow bark (essentially aspirin) could kill him, this woman insisted that it was safe because it was natural.

She meant well. She was also completely wrong.

Just like the guy who made the little berry picture.

So no, I don’t point out to you that planetary alignments are neither rare nor mystical JUST because I am a know-it-all bitch. I mean I AM, but that isn’t the only reason I do it. I want you to stop for a minute and think before you forward or re-post something. If you are posting a picture of something that has not actually happened yet, the chances are pretty good that it is photoshopped. Just like your email cannot magically tell how many people you have forwarded it to, and then DO ANYTHING, let alone something really cool. (Also, the person you got it from had to have sent it to you BEFORE they could see how cool it was. Think about it!) Typing “I am gullible” into the comments thread of a jpeg image is NOT going to make the image do something magical. It just means that everyone will see the big sign on your forehead. I think you know what it says.

So go ahead and unfriend me. I am not going to stop pointing out bad science out of respect for sacred cows. I am not going to stop being snarky about homeopathy or creationism or bigfoot. Or libertarians. Though I will try to confine it to my own feed. Believe it or not I actually do bite my digital tongue on a lot of issues (like GMO’s) because I generally agree with the message even though I think the messengers make piss-poor arguments. I’m not out to make anyone feel bad.

I want you to make better arguments.