Stockholm Syndrome

The Death of Vanity

2006-10-16T15:05:00.000-07:00

Here's the belly from about 2 months ago. I am now much, much larger, but you get the idea. Oh, and now I'm also now sporting a lovely swirl-shaped set of stretch marks that cascade around my belly button.

I've heard that pregnancy, or at least labor, is the death of vanity. I'm not a makeup wearer, I'm not really a girly-girl who gets all quivering for shoe sales or new fashions.... I like to be comfortable and understated... BUT... I was probably about 4 months pregnant when I first read in one of the "you're having a baby" books that your belly button tends to stop being an innie (if it ever was to begin with) during pregnancy.*** Now, I never realized it BEFORE the pregnancy, but I guess I did have a minor vanity point about my perfect little innie belly button. Not that the BELLY was perfect or anything... just the belly button. So, when I read about innies popping out to outties, well... that was the first time I was honestly horrified in the pregnancy.

Labor pains? Psshaaaw.
Weight gain? No biggie.
Frequent urination? Piece of cake.
Stretch marks? Dealable.
Outtie? YIKES!!! Um... I don't THINK SO!!!

So, of course, because the outtie was that which I feared the most, I naturally drew it towards me. By the time I was 5 months along, my innie had totally disappeared. Within a few weeks after that, it popped right out and now, even other pregnant women I've encountered at child-birth classes, etc, have commented on the extent to which my belly button sticks out. I did try, once, putting a band-aid over it, just to see if that would minimize the amount it stuck out through my clothes, but all that ended up doing was giving me a little band-aid outline over the poking belly button and later, after I'd taken the band-aid off, it made my belly button REALLY itchy.

I've finally succumbed to the existance of my outtie. I can't fight it, so I embrace it. It also helps that I am so big that I can't even see my outtie when I'm standing up, since it's on the other side of the crest of my belly, down over by the sea of tranquility. What cracks me up, however, is that the baby has discovered this little spot as one of the few areas where there's flexible space for her and she regularly uses the inside of my belly button as a place to put her elbow or foot or knee and stretch a bit, since it has a bit of give. Therefore, if I'm sitting and she's moving around, the place you are most likely to see wiggling is my protruding, obscene outtie.

*** The books all allege that the belly button WILL return to its previous state after the baby is born. Fingers crossed... They offer reconstructive plastic surgery on belly buttons, don't they? ;-)

Jesus Camp

2006-09-28T14:34:00.001-07:00

I cannot wait to see this movie...

The Witch is Dead!

2006-09-15T13:25:00.000-07:00

Picture dancing munchkins - no, not the kind you get at Dunkin' Donuts... the kind of freaky type from The Wizard of Oz.

I just finished reading the most recent article from SF Gate's "Surreal Estate" series and all I can say is that I am STOKED!!! This week's entry is entitled "Out, Out Damn Spot" a la Lady Macbeth and is the first solid indication I've read that the San Francisco Real Estate Boom is officially over.

Now, this isn't "new news" or anything. A smattering of articles have been cautiously hedging and edging and tip toeing around this subject for months. Perhaps it's been the result of a rare moment of journalistic integrity, wherein the fourth estate has decided not to hurl the local realty market into an abominable tailspin by openly stating what has been easily observable for months - the party's over for the flippers and unwise investors. On the other hand, maybe the lack of bold pronouncements of realty doom and gloom has been spurred on by the fact that local journalists are, themselves, property owners with much to lose in a market crash. Either way, the silence has been odd in the same way that you wonder why nobody's mentioning the elephant in the living room.

Mr. Barbellina & I have been going regularly to open houses for the past year or so, in search of a seemingly modest piece of property - a 2 bedroom condo in the city, outside of bullet range from the projects, with parking that's near a dog park. This has proven to be a highly frustrating endeavor that has been mostly depressing. In our pursuit, we've even come to consider buying into a Tenancy In Common. One thing we haven't budged on, however, is our rule about not entertaining the idea of purchasing property that was involved in an Ellis Act Eviction, which is commonly employed as a method of evicting the elderly and vulnerable in order to flip a property for gross profit. Mr. B and I just believe that, when the Ellis Act is abused (as it frequently is), it is unconscionable and this would be the equivalent, to us, of investing our money in the tobacco industry... sure, you can make money, but at what spiritual / karmic cost?

We are very fortunate to have decent rent where we live and a fantastic apartment, so even though we live in a one bedroom that will be somewhat cramped with the baby's arrival, it will be possible to stick it out for a while where we are. It's a blessing that we don't HAVE to move immediately, which takes a lot of pressure off, but all the same... It has been depressing even just looking at the market. It's disheartening to analyze your financial situation, go through the first flush of "wow, we can really afford THAT much!?!??! We are SO together" and then discover that what you would normally percieve as a veritable embarassment of riches is actually considered, in this market, to be a scoffable pittance that you should feel lucky if it managed to wrangle you a junior studio in a neighborhood where you'd have to kick the used needles and chipped vials aside to clear the doorway entrance every day.

Last year, when we began going to open houses, we were naive enough to presume that a property that was LISTED in our price range would actually SELL in that range. We quickly learned that this was not the case... sleazy realtors would intentionally list properties for easily $30,000 below their expected range in the hopes of sparking a bidding war. Listing descriptions would include snotty little notes from the agents about how "offers will be accepted at noon next Tuesday (after the place would be on the market for a week) and will close accepting offers by the end of business Wednesday." The tone and attitude was that you'd better belly up and fast with a fat check in hand and pray that your offer would be accepted. Adding insult to injury, many realtors made it a practice to openly mention that they would entertain "pre-emptive offers" before the accepted bid date wherein the buyer could put in a bid so ridiculously over the asking price that they could hope the seller would jump on it without having to go into a bidding war with other interested parties.

After a few quick spins on this dizzying dance floor (you swiftly get caught up in it and find yourself making mental compromises like "we don't need a bathroom large enough to sit on the toilet without having your knees scrape the wall"), Mr. Barbellina and I took a deep step back and have become veritable wallflowers at the prom... We're still in attendance... but we're mostly observing for now. We both knew this market couldn't continue forever, and even if the prices don't end up dropping, at the very least, we'd prefer to be buying our first home in a sales environment that allows for contemplation and discussion and even, possibly, a little give and take between the buyer and seller... We don't want to feel pushed into handing over a down payment that is the size of some small nations' entire GDP on a home that we're not completely satisfied with.

Now, however, the moment is over... In the past few months, as we've gone to open houses, the crush of potential buyers has thinned significantly. Showing agents are actually... dare I say it... affable and friendly... hell, even outgoing. They no longer preside over their showing with the casual unsouciance of a 20-something retail whore working the counter at Diesel Jeans, wherein, despite their lack of education and the fact that they're making minimum wage, the clerks behave as though you should feel fortunate to shell out $150+ for some slabs of denim and they'll get to giving you some gum-snapping, black-nail-polish-blowing "service" when they're good and ready.

In addition to the showing agents' newfound sparkle for treating potential buyers as, well... humans, the listing descriptions now include such encouraging phrases as "recently reduced" and "new, lower price," and only the most horribly out-of-touch realtors will mention anything about offers being accepted between "X" and "Y," as though the agents are so harried with their precious time that you'd better accomodate their schedule to offer up your life savings as a meager gesture to the realty gods. Most encouraging of all, the properties that we're looking at these days which are listed in our buying range are actually probably going to sell for around what they're listed at AND they're actually places we'd consider living in...

Upon reading today's Surreal Estate, I was just so encouraged because within the article, Carol Lloyd refers to the market as being a "buyer's market" in an almost casual, it's-always-been-this-way tone. No, there hasn't been a loud pronouncement that I've seen that the boom is over, and perhaps that's for the best... It benefits nobody within our economy to have prices plummet in freefall overnight. However, those of us who are seeking to get into the market without employing such risky propositions as reverse mortgages and interest-only loans, can finally see a light at the end of the tunnel.

All hail!!! Ding Dong, the witch is dead and we may someday soon be able to afford a home without tremendous risk!!!

Here's her head...

2006-09-01T10:14:00.000-07:00

We just had another sonogram this past Tuesday and got a pretty good shot of little Miss Thing's head. This is her at 32 weeks... Other stats of minimal interest to people other than myself and the Mr... I've gained 22 pounds (low end, but totally acceptable, for this stage of pregnancy) and my uterus measurement is 34 cm, which is 2 weeks' ahead in length. The OB says it's looking like this is going to be a LARGE child.

The Baby's Foot

2006-05-30T12:24:00.000-07:00

Here's a scan from the sonogram that captures her foot pretty well. Yep, that's right, she's a "she." If you have any suggestions for names, put them in the comments section! We definitely appreciate suggestions. So far we like Twila, Millicent / Millie, Eloise / Ellie, Grace / Gracie, and Rose / Rosie.

Great Pranks #2

2006-04-20T19:41:00.000-07:00

The B.L.O.
aka "The Barbie Liberation Organization"

The B.L.O. has been culture jamming since the early 1990's. This brilliant commerce jam was an early RTMark project that caught a lot of press and, while not as prevelant today, still has some practitioners. The project involved purchasing Teen Talk Barbie as well as Talking Duke GI Joes, switching their voice boxes and returning them to store shelves (shop dropping) to be re-purchased by unsuspecting shoppers.

The original version of Teen Talk Barbie was so sexist that it even included a phrase "Math Class is Tough." Mattel kept this ridiculous phrase in the doll until the American Association of Univeristy Women took a stand against the doll, causing the toy company to reconsider its decision. In the meantime, however, the Barbie Liberation Organization had begun its work. Just in time for the holiday shopping season, the group managed to get as many as 3,000 of the toys' voice boxes switched abd back on the shelves, leaving children with GI Joes that said the likes of "Let's go shopping" and Barbies that said "Vengeance is mine!"

One of the original creators of the B.L.O. later became a part of the The Yes Men.
To learn more about the Yes Men, here's a good Mother Jones article.
If you'd like to reverse engineer a Barbie / GI Joe voice box here's how: Barbie Liberation Organization PDF

Scary Bad Chicken

2006-04-20T19:01:00.000-07:00

Just because you "can" doesn't always mean you "should." This is another oldy (like the Sanity Test), but in this case it's for evil not humor. Big Guns posted today about the new creepy Burger King commercials. This reminded me of another brilliant and freaky BK campaign, the Subservient Chicken.

Does this really make you want chicken tenders with a little honey mustard sauce? Enough said.

Things That Do Not Engender Confidence in Your OB #2

2006-04-18T00:06:00.000-07:00

This is an entry in a series related to things that I find annoying / questionable in the way my OB/GYN practice is run. Being in my first pregnancy, I'm particularly clueless and therefore worried and anxious, and really want to see positive signs that my health and my baby's health are in good, caring hands. Although I really dig my doctor, I have doubts about the practice...

The Phone Tree
No matter when you call this practice, even during business hours, the phone is never answered by a real, live human being. Instead, for the sake of efficiency (on behalf of the office) or annoyance, this mid-sized (8 doctor) practice makes you run the gamut of the phone tree. In case you haven't made a phone call to a business in the last 15 years, a phone tree is an automated system you encounter when you call in. Most businesses, particularly larger ones, implement this modern evil as a means of deterring you from actually getting help. Occasionally, some poor misguided small-to-mid-sized business will be inspired to put in a phone tree, which effectively contributes to the shortening of their customers’ lives due to a low-grade rise in blood pressure. In the case of the OB practice's phone tree, the system goes something like:

"Welcome to the XXXXXX practice, where we really value ~~your patience~~ our patients! Please listen carefully, as the following menu options have changed. If you'd like to be on hold for five minutes and then randomly hung up on, please press 'one.' If you'd like to learn where to send a payment, please press 'two' where you can immediately speak to one of our representatives. Si se gustaria escuchar a este message en espanol, por favor, oprima el numero 'tres.' If you have an emergency and would like to speak to a human being, please hang up and dial '9-1-1.' Thank you and have a nice day."

Here's why this is disconcerting to me... Either:

A) The practice lacks the funds to be able to pay someone to answer the phone and route calls during business hours. This is a problem because this is an alledgedly popular and busy San Francisco practice and such a lack of funds would indicate either

A1) An exorbitantly high amount of money is being paid to malpractice insurance premiums due to successful claims against the practice's doctors in the past
--- or ---
A2) Someone is embezzling funds from the practice which means that there's a possibility it could go bankrupt between now and when I go into labor. It's never a good thing to show up for a third trimester check-up only to discover that the electricity has been cut off at your doctor's office due to lack of payment.

---OR---
B) The practice isn't interested in investing in hiring a person to answer the phones because it doesn't highly value communications with its patients.

Of the two options (low dough versus low priorities), I find the latter more likely and more disconcerting.

Pregnancy Kvetch #1

2006-04-17T23:28:00.000-07:00

Not Showing
Fergus and I haven't told everyone we know yet that I'm pregnant, but there are many people who do already know - close friends and family. I'm not showing yet, per say. In fact, I'm at 3 months now and with all the nausea, I have lost 2 pounds.***

Right now, the baby is something like the size of a kiwi or a peach, so there's really not a "baby" bump... However, it seems as though ALL of the fat in my body has migrated to my belly. So, while I've even lost a little weight in the past three months, I feel fatter. And it's not a pleasant "I'm pregnant, therefore I'm larger" feeling that I'm hoping I'll have later on in this adventure... It's just this sense of "Oh my god. I am so f-ing fat." I keep chasing poor Fergus around the house with my shirt lifted saying "Look at this pooch!!!! Look at this pooch!!!"

Don't Touch The Belly
Because there are a few people who know I'm pregnant, and because there is the pooch, I've come up with my first pet peeve of pregnancy. So far, two of the people who know I'm pregnant have now touched my blubbery belly - out of the blue, in public and without my permission. Maybe at some point in the future I'll feel okay with this. As Fergus just suggested to me, perhaps I'll even get to a point where I want people touching my belly (seriously unlikely). Right now, however, this is absolutely uncool. It was one thing when it was just one of my friends who did it. Uncomfortable, yes, but I love this friend and she and I are very close and well, I can get over it. Tonight, however, it was one of Fergus' close friends that did it. Funny how I have no problem hugging this man and doing a light kiss on the cheek of greeting when we all meet for dinner out, yet have him touch my belly???? Ummmmm. NO-Oh-Oh.

Solution
I'm going to special order a shirt with a slashed circle placed over a hand on it that sits just over my belly. If this doesn't exist yet on the market, maybe I oughta invent it.

*** It's very important not to lose weight during pregnancy, by the way, because normally when you diet, your body will get some of its necessary nutrition from chewing on the fat that's sitting around on it. Unfortunately, your baby will not gain anything from the fat. The baby gets its nutrition from what you eat, so you need to make sure you're getting all your necessary calories.

Things That Do Not Engender Confidence in Your OB #1

2006-04-17T17:20:00.000-07:00

Dear Esteemed Readership (both of you):

Just as an FYI, in case you didn't already know, I'm pregnant. This is my first pregnancy, so my husband and I are both in completely new territory. Fortunately, we have a number of friends and family who have recently had children, particularly in Fergus' side of the family. After Fergus and I got married and I moved back to San Francisco from Boston, I never got around to getting a proper OB/GYN. Instead, I just had the normal annual tests done via my GP. So, when I ended up getting pregnant, I realized I was at a total loss for an OB. I asked two phenomenal resources, women I trust and whose opinions I value, for suggestions on an OB. They both reccomended the same practice here in SF and, with a little footwork, I ended up with a very nice and, by all reports, fully competent OB/GYN physician.

However, I've got to say... the more experience I have with this particular practice the less confidence I have in them. To learn more about this adventure in pregnancy, follow the (future) thread of posts regarding OB/GYNs.

***BTW - I do really like the OB I've got - it's just I have serious issues with the iciness of the practice.

Great Pranks #1

2006-04-17T16:59:00.000-07:00

I live for pranks. I love driving around a city and suddenly coming across a billboard that's been changed from it's original intended message to something more subverted, ala "The Billboard Liberation Front." Or learning about people that do things just because they can, like the fellows who comprise "The Yes Men." At some point these random, seemingly purposeless efforts rise above the acts themselves and become a form of, well... art.

Although this blog has no real focus yet, and it may never develop one, over time I'll probably be adding more examples of what I perceive to be great pranks. To me, being able to be the fool or create something out of the normal paradigm of our every day world is a beautiful thing. It causes people who witness the action to have to question the way things are for a moment, which, in essence, is what Stockholm Syndrome is all about. Once you realize you have the syndrome, you start to be free from it, even if it's ever so fleeting.

So, with that said, I'd like to present my first example of a Great Prank. May I submit for your consideration, the Pink Dinosaur on the Volcano. Someone:
A) Thought of this idea and then
B) Put it into action by risking life and limb to place this pink dinosaur toy at the edge of a volcanic crater in New Zealand.

The dinosaur, which is the Flintstone's character Dino, first appeared at the volcano in 2004.

Here's the article about Dino and the Volcano. To quote:

"In terms of outreach, Dino has been brilliant. Less expensive than New Zealand Idol and more intellectual than Baywatch, he has a real flair for promoting earth sciences and New Zealand."

Sanity Test

2006-04-14T12:54:00.000-07:00

Big Guns made a recent post wherein he claims you can determine your geek level by how long you watch the Spore video. Well, if you've ever been interested in testing your sanity level, and you haven't taken this particular assessment yet... may I present the Race Car Sanity Test. NOTE - The volume on your computer must be turned ON in order for this to work.

Things that are Cool but Geeky II

2006-04-12T18:00:00.000-07:00

In case you missed it the first time, I'm going to re-state here how cool (but geeky!) the Leg Lamp is. No, I don't own one yet, but if we had a rumpus room in a basement (the implication being that we would also have a basement), this would be one of the first purchases (right after a plaid couch).

The Fundrace.org Site

2006-04-12T17:40:00.000-07:00

I'm sure this is really old news, but I just discovered this great website. Like all good websites, it first and foremost serves as a fantastic time suck and secondly, it provides really interesting information.

The site is called "Fundrace.org." Essentially, all you have to do is plop in an address and the "Neighbor Search" tool will pull up a list of people near that address that donated money during the 2004 presidential election. It will also outline the amount of money and who / what party they donated it to. Fascinating... Think you know your friends and neighbors? Try again!

Things that are Cool but Geeky...

2006-04-12T12:52:00.000-07:00

After reading a recent post over at Big Guns' blog, I thought it might be nice to kick off this blog with a list of things that are Cool but Geeky.

To begin with, there is, of course, the Leg Lamp from "A Christmas Story." This should be on everyone's Christmas list! Also, for my husband's birthday, I recently purchased the retro Atari Flashback.

For $30, this was a blast. As a child, we never had Atari, so I'd have to go to my best friend's house and play there. Of course, because the wire was so short on the joysticks, you had to sit down on the ground within about 3 feet of the tv to play and you'd stay like that for hours... Well, within minutes of unwrapping the Atari, Fergus and I were laid out on the floor in front of the tv battling it out over Centipede (he kicked my butt). It's amazing how quickly you can regress to 3rd grade! Within a short time, I was complaining that we weren't getting to play the games I wanted to play, and he was responding (over the blipping and bleeping), "tough, it's my Atari, so we'll play what I want to.***" Of course we were half joking, but the regression really was there! After an hour or so of playing, we both had cramped necks from craning upwards at the tv, which definitely brought me back to 1984. We also, sadly, had cramped backs from lying on the floor like that for so long without moving, which is a new development for the post-thirty-year-old Atari afficianado. We trundled off to bed at about midnight, a little sore and a little sad about feeling our aging bodies, but also with a little bit of the sense of recaptured youth.

Of course, ever since, the Atari console has sat collecting dust in our tv hutch, but I still say the $30 was worth the night.

***The Atari Flashback does not come with Pacman :-(