Leaving the House with Baby: What Do I Really Need?
***** This is a guest post by Aldo Torner *****
Sometimes it is easy to identify new parents just by looking at what they are carrying. Simply size up the baby bag. As the oldest of six siblings, I remember watching my own mom’s baby bag evolution over the years. It seemed that shopping for just the right diaper bag – and it had to be HUGE – was only important during the early years. Once it came to baby number six, my mom had packing baby’s stuff down to an art, and everything she needed fit into her oversized purse – no diaper bag needed. Of course, the prospect of being out and about with the little one and not having something you need can be quite stress-inducing. So, what do you REALLY need when leaving the house with baby? Here is a brief rundown:
Baby food and drink
Bring baby’s bottle, in an insulated bottle pack to maintain its temperature. Even if you don’t plan on being gone during meal time, bring a bottle with purified water and a travel-sized packet of formula. If you are breast-feeding, of course, you can skip the bottle altogether. Additionally, bring a sandwich baggy or small plastic container with a snack. You don’t need the whole pantry; just some simple finger foods – crackers, for example – will do. Bring a sippy cup of water or juice to wash it down.
When baby gets soiled
Bring a travel-sized pack of baby wipes, a couple of diapers, and a simple change of clothing, like a onesie. Don’t forget clean socks. Either a disposable, or a very compact, changing pad could come in handy . . . but is not necessary, if you absolutely must pack as lightly as possible. Pack a couple of zip-lock bags to store dirty or wet clothing in until you get home.
Comfort
If baby has a favorite blanket, stuffed animal or chew toy, or uses a pacifier, bring those.
Entertainment
Don’t pack the playroom. Remember that baby will most likely be stimulated and entertained by being in a new environment. Pack a small rattler or travel toy. If you really want to conserve space in your diaper bag, opt for toys that attach directly to your baby carrier.
Taking baby out and about doesn’t have to be a nerve-wracking prospect. Just make sure you have these basics packed, and you will be prepared to handle most any situation. Also, remember that just like everything associated with parenting, leaving the house with baby may be scary in the beginning, but you will get better at it and more comfortable with it over time . . . and with a little (or a lot) of trial and error.
*****
About the Author:
Aldo Torno is a career counselor for several phlebotomy schools and plans to pursue a career in nursing within the next year or two. He was inspired to write this article after seeing many young mothers visit his schools while caring for their children. Some of them looked like they were about to move in permanently! Take a deep breath and don’t stress out when you take your baby in public. Be realistic and things will go much smoother than anticipated. Please visit http://www.associationphlebotomytraining.com/ if you’d like more information about phlebotomy as a career.
Related articles
- Diaper Changing Your Baby (enfamil.com)
- What to Take to Daycare/Sitter’s (madelynvittetoe.wordpress.com)
- Smart Money Advice for New (or Expecting) Parent (moneyning.com)
First Signs of Spring [Photo]
We found little flowers blooming over the road on our long walk yesterday.
Despite the current cold snap [do you see how many layers Mini-MI's wrapped in?] the plants have decided it’s sunny enough to get growing. Spose they know best.
Related articles
- Look to nature for early signs of spring (guardian.co.uk)
Parents Who Hid Child’s Gender for Five Years Now Face Backlash
When Beck Laxton and Kieran Cooper had their son, Sasha Laxton, five years ago, they decided that rather than make a big splashy “It’s A Boy!” announcement, they’d keep the news to themselves. Instead, they only told a select number of relatives that little Sasha was a he; to everyone else the child was referred to as “the infant” and described without gendered pronouns. “Stereotypes seem fundamentally stupid. Why would you want to slot people into boxes?” Laxton told her local news outlet, Cambridge …
Unnecessary Redundancy
One of my pet hates is redundant language; I reserve the right to “really truly” for emphasis if I want to, but all that “05-hundred AM in the morning” stuff is for cock jockeys.
Here’s a little visual celebration of redundancy in action:
I'd prefer to prepay afterwards, by Andrew Sardone
Redundant Touch by JulianBleecker
Stating the Obvious by Hryck
Redundancy by mlcastle
Images via Flickr: Andrew Sardone, JulianBleecker, Hryck, mlcastle
Related resources
- Writing tips and blogging job opportunities (invisiblogger.com)
- Redundancy Explains Junk DNA, Redundancy Explains Junk DNA (sandwalk.blogspot.com)
- Tighten up your writing by removing redundant/unnecessary words (cybertext.wordpress.com)
S/S 2012 Fashions I Won’t Be Following…
I was at the shops yesterday & bought a Company magazine – special new redesign, promo price of £1, no idea what’s changed about it other than the crinkly “real feel” paper. Now, I’m not sure if it’s just that I’m deeply untrendy, or whether fashion has crawled back up its own arsehole and died, but there are some trends I simply will not be doing. Ever, if I can help it.
Not Doing: Denim Boilersuits
I last wore one of these in 1987; you can’t make me go back there. I was only 10, I didn’t know what I was doing. I thought [wished] it made me look cool like Ripley in Alien, but I was a kid digging holes in the woods, and a jumpsuit wasn’t going to turn me into a hardcore grown-up heroine. Baggy but not comfortable, inconvenient to change or adjust layers, and there’s no way in hell I’d pay Wrangler or anyone else £135 for making me look like an extra from an archetypal sci-fi engineering room.
Not Doing: 7/8ths Length Jeans
Listen, my legs are long. If I wore jeans that stopped above my ankle bone, I’d have inches of exposed ankle getting hypothermia. Also, it’d look like I’d stolen them from a 12 year old. As it is, I usually wear boots that reach at least mid-calf, so the whole thing would be pointless because nobody would see my on-trend leg length anyway.
Not Doing: Feather Mini Skirts
Because my arse was not built to be a pom-pom. And because if I was going to wear a feather skirt, I’d want bloody great melodramatic peacock feathers rather than that fluffy fringy stuff.
On the upside, leopard print is cool still/again. Boy boots and brogues with big brothel-creeping workwear soles are a thing. And there are ads in there for new extra-big bottles of Aussie Miracle Moist, which is one of the few conditioners my hair will cooperate with.
Related articles
- Style Tip: Wear Rolled Up Denim and Ankle Boots Like Rachel Bilson (ldvfashionfix.com)
- Mischa Barton in Leopard Jeans (denimblog.com)
WTF Happened There?
I just had one of those mad traffic spikes: not a StumbleUpon flashmob, not a run of Facebook click-throughs, but a burst of activity that comes mainly from organic search.
Look:
As it turns out, I had a lot of hits from people searching for Mike Crawley. Which isn’t surprising, because he’s an expert and because he does nudie photos.
There were a couple of hours there when it was all just busy, busy, busy – for this place, at least. I’m used to pootling along at no more than a hundred or so views a day most of the time, so this was pretty fucking unusual.
So who were those passing pervs? Will they be back? Did they find what they were looking for? What does it all mean?
Gun sales banned for Xbox Live Avatars
I’ve just found out on OXM online that the Gears of War Lancer and Hammerburst avatar items are no longer available on Xbox LIVE Marketplace. Apparently a new policy came into effect for all gun-like avatar accessories on the Xbox Live Marketplace from January 1, 2012.
If you’ve already bought guns for your avatar, you should still have those, but it looks like you won’t be getting any more. What a load of bollocks!
I am an adult Xbox 360 gamer and I don’t see the point of this ban. They put age limits on these gun games so why don’t they have the age limit thing on the avatar items if it’s that much of a problem? That way the people who don’t want their children playing around with TOY guns will be able to stop their kids’ avatars holding pictures of guns too. Lol.
I have six children and think it’s fair enough people don’t want their kids thinking its OK to play with real guns. Some parents think it’s bad to play with toy guns too. It’s not real when you play these GAMES. I mean come off it what’s next, are they going to ban kids from playing with toy guns and water pistols at all hmmm?
At the end of the day the avatars are only pictures and it’s safe to say kids have seen pictures of guns before, all over the place. And if they can still see guns on some Xbox Live avatars, given that guns already bought won’t be taken away, then what’s the point?
Army ads show men with guns all the time and show them as heroes – kids see that on TV all the time completely independent of anything Microsoft might do. I personally support the military because they’re sacrificing a lot to protect us, but if seeing pictures of people with guns is so bloody bad for kids, then surely everyone should stop advertising that way? Don’t be daft.
I’ve got a poster on our wall at home of Call of Duty characters holding guns and I don’t believe it does any psychological harm to my kids to see that piece of artwork. BIG DIFFERENCE between real life and games, BIG DIFFERENCE between interactive games and pictures.
***** 4nim4l *****
Related articles
- OXM story: Report: Gun sales to be illegal for Xbox Avatars starting New Year’s Day.
- Marvel Releases Superhero Items To Xbox Live Avatar Marketplace (splashpage.mtv.com)
- Xbox Live Avatar Marketplaces gets tattoos (vg247.com)
Image of the Week: Window disclaimer by Karen Neoh
There are a lot of things I like about this. First of all, I’m just happy that somebody bothered to make up some nice professional looking signage rather than just writing it on a piece of paper taped to the window. That restores my faith in the quirked priorities of humanity.
I also like the fact that their offer of a puppy goes some way to ameliorate the threat to give children strong caffeine beverages. And look, if you don’t want the kids to drink espresso then don’t leave them unattended, right?
You can see more of Karen’s photos on Flickr.
Want to Win Image of the Week?
Send me the URL to your image, or email me the file as an attachment if you prefer. I’m on Facebook and Twitter and my email is mi@machiavelliid.com. Give me whatever info you like about you or your image. That’s it.
[No guarantees that I'll ever publish it, or that I'll repeat what you say about it word-for-word. But if I like your image or your thinking, it's in.]
Science Says: Santa’s Reindeer Probably Girls
Just had a text from Vix asking me whether Santa’s reindeer are boys or girls so that she can answer the question posed in her 7 year old daughter’s note left out for the Fat Man.
The answer, fact fiends, is this:
Most male reindeer tend to lose their antlers by early December, so there’s a good chance that the majority of Santa’s reindeer are female.
We should probably have guessed this from their ability to take Christmas multi-tasking to an entirely new quantum level in delivering all those presents in one night. I am knackered and going to collapse on the sofa with the cheese board very soon. How do they do it?
Merry winter stuff, everyone.
Winter Gingerbread Porridge Recipe (for Toddlers and Grown-Ups)
This porridge is lovely on a cold day because it’s warm and fruity and biscuity. It’s a special happy winter recipe that makes you feel all glowy and full of solstice cheer.
You can add pretty much anything you like to it; this recipe is reasonably healthy, though if you’re an adult trying to lose body fat then you might want to use lower fat milk and go easy on the sweet bits. Sorry, did I just type that? Call an exorcist; I may not have much time.
To serve 1 hungry toddler, we used:
- About 40 g of porridge oats
- About 125 ml of full fat milk
- About 20 or 30 g of gingerbread (we used Organix mini gingerbread men)
- A small handful of raisins or sultanas
- About a teaspoon of apple with the peel left on, chopped into fairly small bits
- About half a teaspoon of orange or lemon peel, grated
- A pinch of ground cinnamon
What to do:
- Put the oats and fruit stuff and cinnamon into a microwaveable bowl [Note: if you don't like microwaves, put it in a pan instead] and stir it all together a bit.
- Set 2 or 3 gingerbread men/pieces aside, and break the rest up into toddler-bite-sized chunks. Throw the chunks into the bowl and stir them in.
- Add the milk and give it another quick stir.
- Microwave it for a minute on full power; stir it, then nuke it again for another 30-60 seconds. [If you're using a pan, bring it to the boil and keep stirring for 2-3 minutes.] Watch it in case it overboils, but don’t panic – it will bubble a lot, but it thickens up as it boils and is unlikely to spill over unless your bowl is really full.
- Take it out of the microwave [or off the stove] and stir it for a good minute while it cools.
- Stick the spare gingerbread men/pieces in the top for decoration.
- Check the temperature’s OK, then eat it.
You Asked For It (You Sick, Sick Puppies): Fetish Fan Photo Requests
OK, I keep getting asked about fetish images and bdsm in particular, so here’s a quick guide to what I’ve got for you:
- Naked ballet and other nude dance: There are still more photos from my “naked ballet in the woods” session with BD-Company.co.uk that I’ll post up sometime soon, but if you really love the nude ballet that much then I can always shoot more. I can tap dance, clog dance, pole dance, hoe-down and do jazz hands “interpretative dance” shit, too, so if you’ve got a “specialist” naked dancing fetish you’ll have to leave me a message about it and I’ll see what I can do. No Charleston though; I never got the hang of that one.
- Pregnancy fetish / various pregnant fetish subgenres like pregnant bdsm, pregnant housework, pregnant in suspenders and so on: Yes, there are lots of photos I didn’t post in the gallery when I was pregnant. I’ll put some more of them up if you like.
- Housework fetish, nude housework, and cleaning fetishes from rubber gloves and washing dishes to scrubbing floors to vacuum cleaning and feather dusters: I have loads of these photos already, and I’ll probably shoot more housework fetish pics in 2012.
- Food fetish / WAM / wearing food: OK, you obviously like this idea a lot. I haven’t posted up many foody photos yet, so I’ll plan a special food fetish photo shoot just for you. Now, what to wear?
- BDSM and other control fetishes: I’ve got quite a few bdsm sets kicking around – I’ll liberate some of the photos from storage and put them up. If you’re into sadomasochism, I’ve got a lovely Wartenberg pinwheel I’ve been meaning to use in a shoot.
- Girly sex: I’m not sure what you’re looking for when you people type this into your Bings and Googles… do you mean like 2 girls together in a faux-lesbian pose? Do you mean girly like all giggly and squeal-y and wearing a pink sweater? Nobody’s directly asked me about it, but I’ve noticed you turning up here looking for it, so if you let me know what it is you want I’ll point you in the right direction.
- What else? Well, that’s mostly up to me but it’s partly up to you, too, – let me know what kind of photos you want to see more of, and I’ll start plotting the next year’s fetish & bdsm photo shoots.
Image of the Week: The Small Hand That Kills by Skippyjon
This is just outstanding in so many ways. Enjoy.
You can see more images by skippyjon on Flickr.
Want to Win Image of the Week?
Send me the URL to your image, or email me the file as an attachment if you must. I’m on Facebook and Twitter and my email is mi@machiavelliid.com. Give me whatever info you like about you or your image. That’s it.
[No guarantees that I'll ever publish it, or that I'll repeat what you say about it word-for-word. But if I like your image or your thinking, it's in.]
Giant Lazy Fairy Cake in 7 Easy Steps
It’s huge, it’s awesome and it took very little effort. This is the ideal cake to make if you don’t, in fact, have time to make a cake. It’s really more about the fun of decorating and the oversized cupcake look. Low-energy cake-making (and parenting) at its best.
We used:
- 1 sponge cake sandwich (from the shops, we were short of time) with raspberry jam and buttercream filling
- 1 giant choc chip cookie (you could buy that too, but we made ours)
- Raspberry jam or whatever jam you like
- Hundreds and thousands, or any kind of small edible sprinkles
All you have to do is:
- Cut two slots about the same length and width as the cookie out of the top of the cake and eat the cuttings.
- Smear jam all over the top of the cake.
- Cut the cookie in half.
- Push the cookie halves into the slots in the cake until they don’t fall over anymore. Curved side up or curved side down, whichever looks better.
- Sprinkle the hundreds and thousands all over the top of the cake.
- Admire the cake.
- Eat the cake.
Five Crazy Rulers in History
***** This is a guest post by Terry Ford *****
We’ve had some crazy times with American Presidents over the years, but it’s been nothing compared to some of the rulers in ancient history. With the upcoming U.S. election, it’s time to take a look back. And let’s at least be grateful we haven’t had to live under the reign of some of these crazy guys (and girls).
1. Caligula
Roman Emperor from 37 AD to 41 AD, Caligula began his reign as a beloved ruler and a supporter of the people. He granted bonuses to the military and put on gladiator shows for the public. When financial troubles hit Rome, Caligula began falsely accusing and killing some citizens in order to gain their estates. He started auctioning off the lives of gladiators. He ordered lavish construction projects in the midst of famine. He soon began insisting that people worship him as a living god. He was said to sleep with other men’s wives and brag about it, prostitute his sisters, indulge in hedonistic sexual pursuits, and order people to be killed for pleasure whenever he felt like it. He even appointed his horse as a senator and a priest of a church.
2. Sultan Ibrahim I
Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1640 to 1648, he was said to be depressed and insane. During his rule, it was essentially his mother who controlled the empire for him. He was obsessed with obese women, and he even appointed one of them, a 330-pound girl he called “Sugar Bit,” Governor General of Damascus. When he found out that some of his prostitutes had been with another man, he had 280 girls from his harem drowned.
3. Queen Maria I
The Queen of Portugal from 1777 to 1816, Maria I was always depressed and maniacally religious. She was a good ruler until she was deemed insane in the later part of her rule. She would often go into fits of delirium, and when her husband died, she forbade any entertainment in the court. At the yearly state festivities, she essentially sucked out all the fun and made them more like religious ceremonies. After she began getting treatment for her craziness, she stopped being an active ruler and would lie around all day screaming.
4. Crown Prince Sado
Sado was Prince of Korea from 1735 to 1762, and he was reported to abuse his servants, kill people and rape women on a whim. It was suspected that he became crazy after suffering from the measles when he was seventeen years old. He terrorized his court, and eventually his father the King ordered him killed. Crown Prince Sado was sealed inside of a rice chest, and he died after eight days.
5. Joanna of Castile
Joanna was Queen of Castile and Queen of Aragon in the early 16th Century. This area is now modern day Spain. Joanna was nicknamed “Joanna the Mad.” Historians believe she suffered from severe depression, or possibly schizophrenia. She was paranoid that nuns were out to kill her, and she often refused to eat or bathe. When her son became King, he forced her into confinement. It is said that when her husband died, she insisted on keeping his rotting corpse with her at all times.
*****
Terry Ford and her team at Grammarly grammar checker love collecting quirky lists and sharing on the web.
My tea spoke to me this morning
Not out loud, you understand. But I opened up my box of chai teabags to find this charming quotation:
If you are cold,
tea will warm you.
If you are too heated,
it will cool you.
If you are depressed,
it will cheer you.
If you are excited,
it will calm you.- Gladstone
How true. Tea is one of those little bits of happiness to which I haven’t devoted enough time lately.
I’m guessing it was William Ewart Gladstone. In case anyone was wondering. But if I’m wrong, pls let me know!
Image credit: Michael Camilleri
Bath with Baby (the place, not the verb (the bath, not the baby))
This week we’ve been in the lovely [rainy, chilly, yet pleasantly not at all like our rainy, chilly home] city of Bath.
The joys of travelling with a toddler in tow meant that I had a meal plan, a huge grocery shopping list, and an even huger packing list before we could even think about leaving the baby-proofed comforts of our flat. Playpen, sleeping bag, travel mattress, twice as many clothes as seemed necessary (because she’s always twice as grubby as you think). Every toy we thought she might not sleep without, yet she still hasn’t slept through the night the whole time we’ve been here.
Now that we’re here, of course, we don’t need half that shit. We will, however, be needing a new suitcase to take it home again. Oh well.
Meanwhile, this is my office for the week. Likey?
CAPTCHA Your Future [Chaos Magick]
Just a thought:
Every day I submit several online forms with a “type the magic words” anti-bot security feature. Sometimes those words seem relevant to one another or to something I was doing at the time.
Are they trying to tell me something?
BTW, If I now say “yes,” then I’m officially a bit of a twat unless I’m suffering some sort of delusions. But I’m not, on either count, so hold your fire.
I’m proposing a kind of Chaos Magick.
What I’m thinking — and be just as aware as I am at this point that it is my brain I’m talking about and my brain that is doing the thinking, so there’s a bias in there somewhere — is that maybe if I recorded the words and what I was doing each time, I’d be able to see either
- an amusingly coincidental pattern [cool!]
- an absence of pattern, amusing or otherwise [ho hum]
- something else that I didn’t predict [awesome! unless it's scary]
As a total aside, when I tried to type “at this point” a couple of paragraphs ago, I typed “that is point” instead. My brain trying to agree with me, or just the usual sleep deprivation talking?
Anyway. So I will. Capture my CAPTCHAs, I mean. I can screenshot them all for a week or 2 and see what I get. Probably nothing. Maybe a nifty word cloud or something. Maybe the brain that’s so far at the back it’s actually part of my spinal column will pick up patterns the rest of me is too clever to notice. Gotta be at least as easy as Nostradamus.
Image credit: Accretion Disc
If your dad’s got a motorbike then you win, even if your dad is ginger.
This is pretty much how I remember the logic of comparing and competing about our parents when I was a kid.
I remember my sister telling people her dad was a strong man. I told him this and he said she was right. She meant like in a circus though, with a fancy mustache and tight leopard print pants with the fashioned-in braces.
I’m only thinking about all this because we went with the Animal to visit some of his other kids yesterday and I was reminded of how important it is, at a certain age, to be able to brag about your family and especially your parents.
Let’s not let them down, eh.
Productivity: How to crush procrastination for good
Here are 5 concepts I’ve discovered that can make a disorganised and lazy grunt like me a bit more efficient:
1. Procrastination isn’t a problem, it’s a solution
But a very poor one. Every bit of time and energy you spend finding ways and means to put things off is a piece of your life that you will never, ever get reimbursed. If this is your solution to things you don’t enjoy or things that scare you, you’re fucked. So, here’s how to remove procrastination from your life.
2. Do the stuff you hate first
The more you put off something that you don’t feel like doing, the more you realise that it can be put off, the more the world shapes itself to your laziness. It’s like a huge vacuum cleaner made of memory foam, sucking your will to live and get on with shizzle. So get up, do it while your procrastinating synapses are still half-asleep, and you won’t have to put it off anymore.
3. Or, don’t do it at all
Does it really need doing? Does it really need you and no-one else to do it? Because, you know, if you’ve been getting away with not doing it so far, then maybe that’s your solution. Just openly don’t do it; no procrastination there. If it must be done, ask someone else to do it for you. Pay them if it saves you from having to procrastinate.
4. Do something else first
Wait, isn’t that procrastination? Nope.
If you purposefully decide that you will do undesirable task X at a certain time, but first have a scheduled appointment with something more enjoyable, that’s called planning. Thoughtful planning will leave you feeling energised and calm when you tackle your task X.
5. Stop smoking (yes, I will, I will)
If you smoke, say 20 cigarettes a day at 5 minutes each, you’re wasting 100 minutes every day. If you also spend 5 minutes walking outside and back each time, that’s 200 minutes a day. More than 3 hours, every single day, spent on something expensive that’s killing you. That’s more than 50 DAYS a year you could have spent thinking, working, or carrying out vital maintenance on yourself (yes, you have to eat, sleep and shit to remain productive; showering helps too).
Maybe I’m on a wrong ‘un here, but it seems to me that if you can find ways to remove the procrastination from life, then you can fill all the time you were going to spend wasting time with something a bit more exciting. Thoughts?
Image credit: ronocdh
Related articles
- Completely Relevant News: It’s Not Procrastination (Really!) (wins.failblog.org)
It’s been a fucking riot. You twats.
Yesterday we heard there was a tiny attempt at a mob looting in our overpopulated suburban town centre. This may have something to do with the recent riots in Tottenham and outwards, but I suspect it has more to do with the fact that too many people in this town and others are bored, sulky twats who think the world owes them a living just for existing.
Harsh? Only a bit.
True? Listen, I used to be one of those bored sulky twats. I know what I’m talking about.
I wouldn’t have started a riot, but I can remember watching the Rodney King riots in LA on my TV screen and thinking something along the lines of “hell yeah”. Before I grew up, I saw it differently – rioters were righteous, the authorities unjust, oppressive and reactionary. I assumed this unless it was explicitly shown to be otherwise. Because I was a twat.
Before I grew up, I threw rocks [small ones! pebbles! but I still did it] at another kid in a riverbed, just because the other kids from school were doing it already. He was an unpopular kid. The thought of what we did makes me sick now, but at the time I did it without thinking. Because I was a child and a bit of a twat.
The problem isn’t that riots get started by a group of angry people whose tempers have frayed to hell. The problem is that riots are propagated by further groups of people who see a chance for a creepy admixture of depersonalised retribution and entertainment.
You are thoughtless wankers. You’ve burned homes, taken lives, and stolen from an economy that’s already been fucked every which way. And it’s not just you. Almost every talking head and chav-on-the-street has annoyed me with their general lack of a proper grasp on the situation. The world hates your face. All of you.
You’ve stood in front of TV cameras braying about respect and shitty policing [riot supporters] or social deprivation and lack of opportunity [middle-class think-gooders] or criminal gang culture and appropriate response weapons [politicians have been far less supportive of domestic rioting than they were of recent violent uprisings on the other side of the world].
The Animal asks me, if the rioters had a problem with the government then why didn’t they go to attack the government? And I tell him,
*sigh* Because they haven’t got a problem with the government, they’ve got a problem with everything that isn’t them and theirs. Frequently got problems with those, too.
*double sigh* Because they don’t in fact know where the fuck to find “the government”. Most of them have never attempted political action of any kind before. Many of them are, however, familiar with fighting and breaking shit up to relieve tensions and resolve disagreements in subcultural politics.
We’re all tired. I’ve got a cold [this has nothing to do with anything, really, but adds to my overall feeling of impatience and weariness]. Just stop being complete fucking idiots and fuck off home, yeah?
Related articles
- The Psychology Of A Rioter (huffingtonpost.com)
- British PM Misses Point of Social Media, Threatens Ban (readwriteweb.com)
The problem with “free”
For a month or 2 (OK, maybe more – my sense of time is hazy when I’ve been procrastinating hard) I’ve been the proud owner of a free .co.cc domain name and free 000webhost.com hosting. I haven’t made any good use of it, but it’s sucked up a fair amount of my time: checking to see if the registration had been activated, requesting activation, waiting, checking to see if the nameservers had been updated yet, waiting, twitching, reading the support resources, visiting the non-existent site to will it into being with my steely gaze, emailing support and waiting a week for a reply.
All I wanted it for was to poke around: instal WordPress.org, play with themes and stuff, test things I wasn’t sure about before I did them anywhere important. I didn’t see any point paying for something I was only going to use for fun and exploration. D’oh.
Top quality fun and exploration are well worth paying for. I wouldn’t say “oh, I’ll only ever use free sex toys because they’re just for fun,” or decide that my walking shoes have to be free because I’ll only use them to explore. So why was I focused on getting my test on for free?
Because the internet’s sposed to be free, yo.
No.
In the end I got pissed off and paid about £20 of our quaint English pounds to some guys online in exchange for a year’s hosting package that’s probably a lot higher-spec than I need, and includes a free .com domain name registration. I didn’t compare web hosting prices and find the best deal, I didn’t ask all my self-hosting friends for recommendations. Shit, I didn’t even tweet for help.
I just got bored bored bored of the dicking around with this free stuff and decided I was happy to pay someone who would do it a little bit faster and better; then I paid the first people I googled who looked… faster and better. And they were. I still had to live chat with a techie about getting my domain registration arranged, but that was quick and painless and live, dammit, so I wasn’t left frustrated and grouchy.
Oh, my aching internet-addicted bones.
I’m not saying all free stuff is bad; I have some excellent free or “freemium” stuff that I’m very happy with and whose support service is actually quite supportive. But I don’t want to embrace the false economy of saving money by doing everything myself, when my time is worth more than the fee for assistance.
So this morning I looked at my situation and grokked this: I could spend a few hours messing with my new setup and export-importing all my content and adding plugins and dancing with widgets. Or I could spend some cash and have my new site set up for me. I’d been intending to do it all myself, to benefit from the learning implicit in any new activity. But I realised the knowledge to be gained is largely “how to point and click”, and I’m pretty sure I could pick it up whenever if I needed to. So again, I’d rather spend a little cash and save the hassle than spend the time (when I could be earning money or chilling with my family) to do it myself.
Problem solved through the application of cash. So if you have cash, great – your takeaway is to spend more of it on saving yourself for the good stuff. If you don’t have cash, that sucks and I’m on my way. Leave me a comment (or email me) about who you are and what you’re doing for money; I’ll get back to you and help if I can.
Image credit: Gisela Giardino
How to make a shitload of cash without working too hard
This is how I see myself and my business in a few years’ time. Especially the chart.
Seriously though, how are you going to get from here to there?
My plan involves working bloody hard (but,like I said,not too hard) and training the Animal to make money from blogging too. That way I can just put in a regular few hours a week working for other people, a few more working on my own side projects, and spend the rest playing ball and reading books with Mini-MI while the Animal plays househusband. In the park. With ice cream. Cos that’s how good it will be, if I get it right. Right?
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Image credit: Snugg LePup
15 Safe Ways to Entertain a Baby (or Toddler) in the Car
We did a roughly 12 hour trip each way on our jaunt to Echternach, and Mini-MI suffered all the indignities of a long hot day in the car admirably. There were times when some of these ideas came in bloody handy, though.
BTW, when I say safe I mean it in a relative sense — nothing is truly safe when you’ve got a one-year-old with you.
- Books. Preferably soft ones, to prevent injury when they’re thrown at your head.
- Music. Mini-MI will be happily distracted for up to half an hour at a time if there’s something to listen to.
- Pulling faces. Doesn’t matter if you’re no good at it, they’ll show you how.
- Water games. On a hot day it’s particularly good – just drip a bit of water on the baby’s head or arm, let them do what they like. Give them the beaker and leave them to it if you can…
- Singing. Any kind will do, especially if you’ve got no other music.
- Hand signs. Vulcan, Gangsta, Rocker, Surfer – all genres welcome here. You copy them or they copy you; this is an easy one.
- Food. Let’s face it, this is one of the easiest distraction tactics in the world. Something that takes a while to eat is best.
- Hunt the Food. When your darling little one drops half-chewed snacks into the mysterious cavities of the upholstery & luggage, you’re gonna play this one anyway. Might as well play for laughs.
- “Look!” (like I Spy, but for younger infants the objective is just to point out the window at stuff. Mini-MI likes spotting bikers on the road.)
- The paper fan. Fold a paper sheet in zigzags, pinch one end and fan the other out, waft it at your offspring. Cooling and entertaining.
- “Where’s your…?” (like Look! but pointing at bits of your body)
- Drawing. Provided nobody gets stabbed with a crayon, this could occupy a whole 20 minutes before the upholstery’s at risk.
- Clapping hands. Mini-Mi absolutely loves the power trip of grabbing our hands and clapping them for us, or you could play pat-a-cake if you remember how.
- Winking and blinking. Younger kids typically haven’t figured out how to wink yet, but they’ll give it a damn good try.
- Sleep. Yes, OK, you can’t make this one happen. But it’s the longest period of quiet you’ll have, so make the most of it when you get it.
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Cupcake decorating frenzy!
We made these cupcakes today. Frosted ones with jelly drops on top, fairy cakes with lemon curd and lime buttercream icing, blackcurrant jam filled ones with lids, and my experimental ones with frosting over lemon curd. Nom.
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