Category Archives: Family

Oscar Update, Updated Twice

Oscar-Wood’s feather-plucking habit is slowly abating. He has, so far, grown back green socks. He had previously plucked them, leaving only red rims on his little bare legs. Oscar-Wood says, “Moron,” “hello,” “knock-knock who’s there” after punching a bell, “Hello Omar” (the name the breeder had given him, which had to be changed, for obvious reasons), “ring-ring,” “Atshoo” in a pitiful voice, and generally sounds like one of those little rubber toys you press and they emit cute sounds. When he feels insecure, Oscar rushers into his cage and snuggles up to his comfort toy—a thing that combines fluff and wood—and chews on some wood for comfort.

It works for him.

[Click on image to enlarge.]

Update: Oscar-Wood loves his neck stroked. He indicates he wants it done by bending his head right down and exposing his neck. If he can’t get a human to do it—preferably daddy, whom he adores—he folds two of his pink claws over the one, and uses the remaining claw to stroke his own neck. Needless to say, he closes his eyes when tickling himself.

Oscar-Wood’s little green socks and red jacket lapels are growing back.

Oscar recommends that you buy his mommy’s book, Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Society. Proceeds go toward the Oscar-Wood and T. Cup Nut & Wood Fund.

Update III: Your Kids: Dumb, Difficult & Dispensable

Democracy, Education, Elections, English, Etiquette, Family, Intelligence, Liberty, Propaganda

The excerpt is from my new, WND.COM weekly column, “Your kids: Dumb, Difficult & Dispensable”:

“Don’t ask why the ‘news’ is all aflutter for Meghan McCain, but earlier in February, she issued another of her sub-intelligent messages, on a forum – ABC’s ‘The View’ – that is a fertile seedbed for mind-sapping stupidity:

The Tea Party Movement was ‘innately racist,’ Meghan said. This was why “young people were turned off by the movement.” And , in her most grating Valley-Girl inflection: ‘I’m sorry—revolutions start with young people, not with 65-year-old people talking about literacy tests and people who can’t say the word vote in English.’

The rude reference was to Tom Tancredo’s observation that people ‘who cannot spell the word vote or say it in English’ are determining elections in America.

The former congressman and 2008 Republican presidential candidate was on to something. The Founding Founders decided in their wisdom that only propertied males would vote. To justify distaff disenfranchisement look no further than ‘Meghaan.’ As to the other limitation: The founders were not democrats; they foresaw today’s pillage politics – and they understood that, unchecked, overbearing majorities would be more malignant than monarchs. And all too well did the founder know that, granted a vote, the unpropertied masses would help themselves to the belongings of the propertied.

But what would ‘Meghaan,’ a member of the Millennial generation, know about a group of truly great revolutionaries whose average age, in 1776, was 44?

“The ‘Meghaan’ Millennials are a generation of youngsters that reveres only itself for no good reason.” Yes, ‘Meghan is a member of a studied cohort, born between 1980 and 2001.” Read more about these “needy and narcissistic dullards.”

The column is “Your kids: Dumb, Difficult & Dispensable.

And do read my libertarian manifesto, Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Society.

The Second Edition features bonus material. Get your copy (or copies) now!

Update I (Feb. 19): To the critic hereunder: The column references “The ‘Trophy Kids’ Go to Work,” an article that distills the conclusions of a book packed with data. The method of the column: go from the particular to the general; go from one colorful case everyone knows and move to the general.

Update II: “Thomas” below is yet another instructive case study on the Millennials, their demeanor and capabilities. Note the run-on, ungrammatical, misspelled, incoherent sentences. T. has not been taught to write a simple sentence with a subject, a verb and the attendant clauses. Not his fault, I guess, but I know many self-taught individuals who’ve made up for the deficiencies of their teachers just fine.

He’s arrogant and insulting; is big on the ad hominem and the non sequiturs; but incapable of putting forth an argument. An example of a non sequiturs hereunder: I should be picking on another generation, he says. Maybe, but this column is about his generation (I presume). The the fact that another generation is problematic doesn’t invalidate a critique of the Millennials. See what I mean by a non sequituir?

My column argued that, for the most, not his but my generation has invented and is perfecting the gadgets he cannot do without, yet he repeats the following fallacy: The twitterering twits are prescient and streaks ahead of us, their parents.

In fairness to the poor creature, I have received many such letters in my career. They tend to be from younger people, but not always.

Finally, another typical sign of grandiosity: He has not read the posting policy on this blog. Since rules are not for his ilk, he does not dare limit the reader’s exposure to this word salad of his. A good teacher would have red inked this letter, and taught the young man to say what he is struggling to say in one short paragraph.

As you can imagine, there are a dozen more insulting messages demanding space on this, my private property. The insults, moreover, evince the utter absence of intellectual curiosity—T. had not read any of my writings or my bio, so has cheerily lumped me with all of Hannity’s handmaidens.

Update III (Feb. 22): Robert’s point I’m afraid is simplistic; and certainly not the thrust of my article. Hint: Most everything I direct my cultural commentary at, and this column is no exception, can be summed up thus: ORDERED LIBERTY. Ordered liberty is about hierarchy. Read “THE IMPORTANCE OF BOUNDARIES.” Perhaps the larger philosophical point of everything cultural I write will become clearer.

Updated: Michelle’s Fat-Based Initiative

Barack Obama, Bush, Family, Government, Healthcare, Racism, The State, The Zeitgeist

For Bush it was the faith-based initiative; for the current First Lady it’s the Fat-Based Initiative. From where Michelle is perched, it’s nice to be able to have the president sign an order establishing a federal task force to tackle a problem she’s made her own. What power.

Michelle’s latest quest is to exercise Our Children, feed them healthier food and label foodstuff big and bold for their dopey parents. These busybody schemes comport perfectly with the Obamas view of the role of government (cutting back on spending can wait).

Question: Why no white butterballs in the press photo op?

Update: You get awards for being a meddlesome bore.

CNN: Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver on Wednesday called for an overhaul of America’s food system, saying the country’s poor decisions about what to eat are shortening life spans and increasing health care costs.

As I observed, “Idiots have come into their own in a big way, courtesy of depraved consumers, and complicit TV producers and publishers, of pixel and paper alike. The duller you are and the louder you crow in contemporary America, the better you do.”

Updated: Daddy Brown Creeps Me Out (He Should You Too)

Education, Etiquette, Family, Gender, Music, Republicans, Sex

It’s been my perception for some time that American fathers, generally, are sexually inappropriate with their daughters. The fault lies—again, generally—not so much with the hapless dad, but with these young, assertive females, taught by pedagogues and reinforced by parents and the culture that, “I’m like a sexual being” (uttered in Meghan-McCain like tart tones). The onus is on those around the girl to let her act out her sexuality 100% of the time—or so the consensus seems.

Repulsive. Improper. Unnatural.

However, Scott Brown, the man from Massachusetts who filled Kennedy’s sacred seat in the U.S. Senate, went beyond the call of an American dad’s duty in advertising his girls’ availability during his acceptance speech.

This picture of Brown with his girls, jutting boobs and all, certainly reinforces my view of impropriety (yuckiness).

More obscene than anything discussed here, however, is Ayla Brown’s singing. No, she’s not talented. Strained, bedroom groaning is not good singing. On the other hand, I guess it has its places …

Update (Feb. 4): The comment about my hailing from a once-Christian conservative country (South Africa, RIP), and thus not acclimatizing well to the hyper-sexual American family is completely off. It demonstrate to me that even conservative-minded readers are incorrigible cultural libertines.

It used to be the most basic of things that young women were modest about their sexuality around their fathers. The father-daughter relationship is a primary one for a girl. From it will develop all her future relationships with men. This is precisely why to me the specter of fems letting it all hang out around their fathers is disturbing. And why a father should know better (and Brown has carefully crafted his public image, including the pics he has released to media), and ought to be able to tell his proudly presenting girl, “Here’s my Hawaiian shirt, sweetheart, cover up.”

When you talk about restoring the middle-class family and its values, this is it. When you talk about returning America to a healthier time when parents where parents and not potential admirers or friends or sexual coaches, this is it.

For touting a slut like Kim Karsashian as a role model for “young girls” (read: budding sluts) because she doesn’t drink (but films herself adoringly copulating), Sean Hannity is a libertine. Am I from Another Culture to suggest this? Cultural conservatism used to be apple-pie American. Now my so-called culturally conservative readers find me quaint.

I despair. It’s beyond repair.

Incidentally, where on the continuum of tender (or, dare I say twisted) soft porn, suggestive, father-daughter tease are our wholesome Miley and Billy Ray Cyrus situated?