Bookish (and not so Bookish) Thoughts

Hey there! Thanks for stopping by. If you link up below can you do me a favor and post a link back on your post? Most of you already do, so thank you! 

1. We were at this kind of lame safety festival by our house last week so Sawyer could see the emergency response vehicles (and dogs and horses) and I saw a fireman grab a woman breastfeeding on the ground a chair. It just struck me as something really nice to do, since I feel like a lot of people still turn up their noses to nursing in public. 

2. I will always inwardly cringe when total strangers call me "honey" or "sweetie." I'm looking at you, Starbucks barista who is five years older than me. 

3. I will never feel comfortable offering my condolences to people on social media. It feels so insincere and awkward.

4. In other news, I was sort of blindsided by an educated adult whom I know very well, for my "white privilege" today, completely out of nowhere. How fun! I wrote a very long response to the person and was a millisecond away from pressing send but deleted it and tried to move on. I have obviously not moved on, as I feel sort of insulted, since I'm still thinking about it. Maybe if it was in person it would have been different (see #3, I guess). I just don't get it and am trying to be a good friend and believe that it wasn't meant to upset me. 

5. I'm reading Roxane Gay's Bad Feminist and have been really conscious of the role women play in children's books lately. Sawyer has a book about trucks and out of the like twelve drivers in the books, only two are women and one drives a pink truck. In a book he has on robots the female robot is also pink and makes cookies and helps with homework. Naturally. Because that's all she can do. 

6. I'm about to make these guys for a work baby shower tomorrow.

7. Why do car clocks gain time?

8. I've said some weird things as a parent, but I think one of the strangest so far has been "No, that is not a ball, it's Oscar Wilde's head."

9. When I saw this earlier on Facebook, in reference to teaching, today I was like, "Yes! That is so true! We need to be there for the students! I love this!" But then I started thinking about it more and decided I actually hated it. I don't even know what I needed when I was in high school! Probably someone to tell me to relax, go to a party, and stop stressing about my family and the future for five seconds. But kids need different things. Some need a firm kick in the pants. I didn't need that, but I can do it! Some need a friend. A cheerleader. A confidante. An intellectual rival. A sounding board. A break. I'm probably reading too much into this. It probably just came from Etsy or Pinterest.

10. I finally figured out how to shuffle all my music with the newest itunes on my phone. So yay for that. 

Love Me Some Homoerotic Victorian Lit

In honor of new, uncensored The Picture of Dorian Gray that was released earlier this month, I'd like to climb on my soapbox for a second. I really, really hate the phrase "that's so gay." I'm a heterosexual woman, but I still find the phrase so offensive. What is it supposed to mean? When I hear it in context it's usually being used a synonym for lame, feminine, or corny. It's distasteful and rude.

Okay, I'm done. Well, at least until I receive my copy of And Tango Makes Three next week from Amazon (I fell off the wagon, but had a gift card) and go on and on about book banning and gay penguins.

For those who aren't familiar with The Picture of Dorian Gray by one of my favorite Victorian writers Oscar Wilde, it's about a man so obsessed with youth he wishes a painting would age instead of his actual body. When this actually happens he becomes a very, very naughty boy, partaking in activities that would make the fragile Victorians readers faint (alcohol, drugs, promiscuity, and homosexuality). Wilde's publisher of course toned it down, deciding to cut out most of the homoeroticism. This summary doesn't do the book justice, by the way, so please read it if you have not.

Now, 120 years later, editor Nicholas Frankel is publishing a more uncensored version, adding in more of the original text, as well as a great deal of annotation. Will it be raunchy by today's standards? I highly doubt it. Will it be that much longer of a text? No, rumor has it only five hundred additional words. But, in a time where steps have been taken to "clean up" certain classics, is it a good thing? Absofuckinglutely.