Things to Check Out

Who’s a hot tamale? It’s me! And everyone else in central Virginia. Seriously, it’s almost a hundred degrees and so humid if you made a wringing motion in the air, you could squeeze out some drops. This is how I came to discover my dogs are, sadly, kind of stupid. They want to be outside, even though they could easily incur brain damage in this sort of heat. It’s okay, though. Smart dogs might know to come in, but then they get bored and start tearing up furniture and fucking up all your Word settings.

Anyhoo. My online pal Brené Brown is starting a blog series about her research on parenting and shame. What I love about Brené is that she’s a serious qualitative researcher and knows all this stuff about shame (the difference between it and guilt, how it has an impact on people’s lives, how uncomfortable it is for people to talk about)—and at the same time doesn’t act as if she’s immune to shame, or being imperfect. (This is my pet peeve with many experts: They always have some big conversion story when they finally realized that what they were doing—read, what you are doing—is wrong and now they don’t do it anymore. The subtext is: Looky here—now you can be perfect like me!)

Brené’s blog series is a companion to her CD on parenting and shame, which is both interesting and funny. For example, she recounts the events in this blog entry of hers that I love so much. Because who hasn’t ever hoped to be a bigger deal than you actually are? I’m looking forward to the series.

Also, if you’re a reader, you will want to know about Sundae Horn’s zine Ex Libris, in which she writes about books in an engaging and personal way. I met Sundae years ago through Brain, Child, and when I got the two latest issues of Ex Libris, I plopped my ass down on the couch and read straight through. You can order it by sending $8 (payable to Sundae Horn) to P.O. Box 544, Ocracoke NC 27960. That gets you four issues.

Oh. One more thing. You might have seen this youtube video by Dennis Cass already, but seeing Jody’s post about MySpace reminded me.