I've become obsessive about the Weather Channel, and check it first thing each day as I stagger towards the bathroom. Those little icons and the cheering reports (available for 36 Hr forecasts, 10 Day forecasts, and Hourly forecasts) make or break my morning.
Never mind what abstract joy the stars might have in store for me - I want to know whether I need to nag my highschooler to put a raincoat on before he leaves for the station.
However, my relationship with the WC is turning sour. I'm getting broody and sullen. The icons are letting me down. And it all hinges on definition.
Take today, for instance: intermittent show showers were forecast (the big load is waiting for us tonight, apparently). What does this mean?
As far as I am concerned, a shower means drops, a sprinkle, a short fall of rain or snow or liquid.
Clearly, the Weather Channel and I don't share the same understanding of a short fall - it has been snowing without stopping (save for a brief interval about 10ish) since 8am and it is now 13:45. Call me a curmudgeon if you wish, but this is not, definitely not, absolutely not, in any way, shape, iteration, or definition, a SHOWER.
So there!
It has got me thinking, though. I am going to start looking more closely at the language we use to talk about the weather.
Now I am off to dig out the car from under the "1-2 inches" that were originally predicted (plus another couple of inches that just came along for the ride). Ha! Forecasts!
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Monday, January 17, 2011
Idiotic Princes - the dubious messages in some fairytales
I read fairy tales unquestioningly as a child. Now that I have children, those stories seem less benign.
I loved Cinderella. I had ugly younger brothers, not ugly stepsisters, but that just reinforced the myth for me, because my parents were manifestly unfair about the boys and housework.
But, and this is the thing, Cinderella was all about the dresses and winning over the siblings (she got to go to three balls in increasingly magnificent dresses in the Ladybird Best Loved Tales Series 606d). The romance was irrelevant except as part of Cinderella's revenge.
Even at six, I knew the Prince did not matter.
Looking back on it now, it is obvious. He is an idiot.
Presumably that could only happen if they had equally dense princesses, but that's another post.
I loved Cinderella. I had ugly younger brothers, not ugly stepsisters, but that just reinforced the myth for me, because my parents were manifestly unfair about the boys and housework.
But, and this is the thing, Cinderella was all about the dresses and winning over the siblings (she got to go to three balls in increasingly magnificent dresses in the Ladybird Best Loved Tales Series 606d). The romance was irrelevant except as part of Cinderella's revenge.
Even at six, I knew the Prince did not matter.
Looking back on it now, it is obvious. He is an idiot.
- He doesn't recognize the woman he has been dancing with all night. Where was he looking for heaven's sake? Not at her face, obviously.
- He thinks that shoe size matters. Great basis for choosing a long-term partner!
- Sleeping Beauty (rather says it all, doesn't it!). The Prince fights his way through a densely-woven hedge of spines to fall in love with a woman in a coma (obvious psychoanalytic interpretations). Some versions of the story have the Prince effectively raping Sleeping Beauty while she sleeps. What a hero!
- Snow White's prince also falls in love with a passive heroine - she's dead and lying in a crystal coffin. Necrophilia is not actually illegal in the United States as a whole, but the Prince had better not take his loved one's coffin to Nevada where he could get life-imprisonment.
Presumably that could only happen if they had equally dense princesses, but that's another post.
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