pms666.com

I feel i must say a quick hello, since to my own surprise (or satisfaction?) i have been actually not been suffering, hence my absence, and i feel i owe my fellow bitches a bit of an explanation as to why and how did i do it. Note: i fully expect heated hate mail to follow this post as it goes against the ENTIRE point, vibe and general sisterhood that made the wonderful site we all now use to vent our extreme emotions during such our time of crisis. it surely has saved many men from our abuse.

 Calcium. One simple mineral seems to have abated the dragon within, since i doubt my PMS has just disappeared on it’s own…after all, i have had it for my entire life up until now. most times so bad i’ve made some startling changes in my life, only to realize, a few days later, that indeed i was just a weensy bit to hasty or harsh.

I want my PMS back but i’m afraid!!!! i think this month i may lay off it and see if i can bring it back on, since i just feel so damn LEFT OUT! i’ve got soooooo much anger i swear it!!!!!!!

anyway….it’s depressing to be left out of the PMS circle. i just hope you ladies don’t hate me for my surprise exit.

 as an olive branch i’ll proof read everyones emails every month, to ensure no one sends anything that would come back to haunt, fire, or dump them.

XO Gimmiemeds

Okay, I’ve been sucked into the homeschooling blogosphere because a few kind homeschoolers picked up my rant about the evils of public education. So of course I got side tracked reading everyone else’s blogs because I’m horribly addicted to the Internet (you can tell because I use words like “blogosphere”).

And so….I stumbled upon this delightful wish list from a weary homeschooler that I just HAD to share. I wonder if I should order secular homeschooling magazine. Would that be too needy? I mean I don’t even homeschool (yet), but I so want to belong. Please, please accept me! I hate public schooling too! And my friends and family think I’m nuts. If that’s not enough to qualify, then how about the fact that I got rid of cable two months ago and haven’t watched a lick of t.v. since. Well now you all think I’m crazy.

Oh forget it. I just don’t have it in me to be snarky and cynical. I’ll be back in a month. Where the hell are Maxine Pad and Gimmemeds anyway? They haven’t posted since August.

I have to stop surrounding myself with such positive people.

My first post (rant) about my experience with the public education got such a good response from a home schooling group based in Georgia, that I’m compelled to follow-up with some recommended reading and links back to the good folks who took the time to comment.

First of all, recommended reading for anyone who suspects their child’s school is just, well, fucked up is Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling by John Taylor Gatto :

I didn’t actually read this book, I read The Underground History of American Education

You can read the entire text of the book online at Gatto’s Web site. Warning: this book will change your perspective on the American education system we all know and loathe. Have a back up schooling plan before digging in.

Another enlightening book for the preschool through first grade set is A Child’s Work: The Importance of Fantasy Play by Vivian Gussin Paley, a former kindergarten teacher (of 37 years).

I read Paley’s book before pulling my 6-year-old out of public school, and Gatto’s book after she started private school. Which was good, because it was a very financially nerve wracking decision and Gatto helped reinforce my instinct to throw myself bodily over my child to protect her from the evils of public schooling.

Our private school experience is really positive. The school takes a very alternative approach to education and costs about half the price of other private schools, but is still mind numbingly expensive at about $9500 per year. Yeah, you read that number right. Still, we’ll keep her (and eventually her llittle sister) in the school as long as possible. Just about everyone running the school has kids in it and my daughter is once again her happy, silly, creative self again. She’s only been in the school since January 3rd.

So that’s a good segue to my shout outs.

Thanks Sunshine for posting a link to my original rant on your blog, Raw Life and here’s another link to your site on raw foods and autism (rawtism). A whole new thing for me to explore! Geez…

Thanks Jenny, a homeschooler who can expect to receive an email from me about her home schooling experience once I run out of money for private school, which will be any second.

Thanks Laura, who’s not only into home schooling, she’s into home birthing and is a home birthing instructor. Wow, can’t we leave the house for anything anymore?

Thanks to the others I’ve neglected to list because they didn’t include links to their sites, plus I have a short attention span…oh, is that a hershey’s kiss over there???

This is quite probably the perfect man. The only minor edit I’d make to this commercial is the part at the end where she bites his ass. I’d probably have her bite off his head.

My PMS tribute to the world of Disney cartoon women was the first hint at my preoccupation with the phenomenon of Walt Disney. Really, the reason for my curiosity about the man himself is inspired by the surplus of princess-related propaganda that litters my house like so much pink, baby blue and purple garbage. The stuff of little girls’ dreams.

Disney’s World: A Biography

Disney’s World: A Biography by Leonard Mosley is the story of Walt Disney’s life, truncated to fit about 300 pages. And although all the facts are taken from official Disney sources e.g., the Disney Archives, the book portrays a lot of what I’ll call Walt Disney’s “crazy.”

Considering the nature of this blog, I have no interest in focusing on the genius of Walt Disney. Sure, he invented animation as we know it today (or so the biography claims), and Mickey Mouse (who I’ve always detested), and let’s not forget how his movies introduced the great American fiction of high expectations (I’m still waiting for my damn prince to show up and take me away from all this). But there was so much more to Walt Disney then all that other rubbish. I mean, I had no idea.

For example, good old Walt hated Jews and “blacks.” He didn’t believe women could be good artists and so all of his top animators were men. Women were relegated to the job of “inking” – that is, transferring all the drawings to plates using ink for some sort of purpose which wasn’t really made clear in the book, but I’m betting was extremely important.

Walt also smoked like a chimney (he ultimately died of lung cancer) and had a creepy aversion to sex as well as the fairer sex, but if he digged dudes then it certainly wasn’t alluded to in this book. He was a mean boss who never gave credit to any of his employees. He viewed himself as a paternal father figure who took care of his employees and therefore they should be grateful for his patronage and just shut the hell up about their low wages already.

In fact, Walt spied for the FBI for many years reporting on union activities. What I’m really amazed at by Walt’s life is his lack of foresight into his own death. He kept such a stranglehold on his company that he remained the sole “boss” until he died in 1966. Then the vultures swooped in and turned an already damaging source of social influence into a genuine phenomena of corporate greed and destruction.

Women continue to be portrayed as evil bitches or nonexistent entities in Disney movies (Shrek excluded), the false promise of the shining prince is still part of this country’s ongoing dialogue with its little girls, but only if you look like Belle, or Ariel, or Jasmine. What about the rest of us, I wonder? (we get to bitch about our crushing disappointment on blogs like this…)

The book is worth reading if only to marvel at the complete lack of social conciousness that Disney had. Perhaps he was simply a product of his time, but I’m almost positive that other prominent figures in the early to mid 20th century actually used their fame and influence for GOOD. All the great things he created and initiated, up to and including Walt Disney World in Florida, appear to have been to feed his own internal drive to create something worthwhile…for…himself…

I give this one three tampons out of five, mainly because it’s a great way to justify your innate and unspoken hatred for all things Disney.