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30 Nov 2011
... who is thirty three today.
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30 Nov 2011
Continuing my desktop cleanup, here's another agony aunt column I wrote for the Sunday Independent.
Dear Panti
I'm really bothered about how my daughter-in-law is behaving since she married by son, but I can't talk to anyone else about it because otherwise I'll just be seen as the nag mother-in-law.
Basically she's acting as if she's still single, and I think that my lovely son is suffering as a result. They got married last Christmas, but she certainly doesn't act like it. She was always more outgoing than my son - a real social animal - and I was a bit unsure about the match at first. But he loved her, and I thought that perhaps it works because they have different temperaments and interests. But honestly in the year they've been married she still goes out two or three times in the week with her girlfriends. She went on a girlie holiday with them earlier this year too, while she only deigned to go on a long weekend break with her husband. When she isn't out with her friends, she's signing up for exercise classes, and has started training for a marathon which sounds like it's going to require a huge amount of time and effort.
My son has his own career and a few close friends, but he always told me that he prefers to stay in and was looking forward to settling down and having a quieter life after he got married. I've subtlely enquired if he's unhappy with his wife's constant gallivanting, but he insists he doesn't mind, that he wants her to be happy. I'm afraid that he's too soft - he always has been with women - and would like him to stand up for himself and remind his wife that there's more than one person to think about now.
Should I talk to my daughter-in-law myself? Or maybe get my other son to help me out? What would you do?
Nora.
Dear Nora,
I hope for your sake that you never find yourself in a horror movie because you will definitely be one of the first characters to croak it. You are the character that peers into the dank depths of the castle dungeon and even though your torch battery has died, and the whole cinema is screaming at you to turn around, you decide to creep down the steps to certain doom anyway.
You already know that by sticking your nose in you'll "just be seen as the nag mother-in-law" so why are you still considering it? Turn back Nora! And let's be clear here: you won't just be seen as the nag mother-in-law - you will be the nag mother-in-law. No young husband wants to hear his mother criticising his young wife, and if he's forced to take sides, it's unlikely to be your's. Are you willing to take that chance?
And frankly Nora, it's none of your business.
When your adult son chose to marry his wife, he was (I assume) very well aware of her outgoing personality, and no doubt it was one of the very things about her that he fell in love with. Perhaps when you got married it was expected that once a woman had that ring on her finger her days of independent fun were over and she would dedicate her every waking hour to the apple of her mother-in-law's eye, but modern young couples see things differently. Of course they do - they live in a different world.
You say your son is happy and "insists he doesn't mind" that his wife has an active social life, and there doesn't appear to be any reason to doubt him. Indeed, it appears that the only person who has a problem with your daughter-in-law's "constant gallivanting" is you.
You know, if I didn't know better Nora I'd say you were jealous of your daughter-in-law. You even take issue with her keeping fit and training for a marathon! It's just more of her "constant gallivanting". Why aren't you proud to have such a determined and fearless daughter-in-law? Perhaps you never had the kind of independence she enjoys. Did you, like most Irish women of earlier generations, go straight from your parent's house to your husband's? Did you never have the opportunity to be your own woman, as your daughter-in-law probably did before marrying your lovely son? Do you see her casually taking for granted things you never could have wished for?
Fools rush in Nora, and you would be a fool to rush in between your son and the woman he loves. Especially when it almost certainly isn't necessary. Chances are that if and when your son and his wife decide to have a family of their own, the demands of motherhood will crowd out her social life. Marathons and girls' nights out buried under nappies and night feeds.
And when that happens Nora, I hope the two of you will be close enough that she can ask you to babysit occasionally.
panti
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30 Nov 2011
Benny Hill and Michael Jackson.
(via ThisIsNotPorn)
that is all
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people
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29 Nov 2011
This time they're off to the supermarket.
fun
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people
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comedy
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29 Nov 2011
When writing this post about last Friday night (when we were expecting a possible visit from the religious writer of the slly note we got) I mentioned a funny moment when a guy walked by carrying a life-size crucifix. I lazily assumed, and wrote, that he was coming from an event happening that evening in the Destiny Church, a few doors down from Pantibar.
However, the pastor of the church was on to me to clarify that the gentleman with the crucifix was not coming from their event which was a contemporary music event with people of any and no religious persuasion (and did not feature any life-size crucifixes!)
And I am happy to clarify that.
blog
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29 Nov 2011
that is all
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29 Nov 2011
Only five minutes ago Miley Cyrus was a Disney tween popstrel, and now in the space of two days it turns out she's a big stoner, and then she releases this track and music video which acually manages to capture the revolutionary spirit of the Occupy movement. Miley Cyrus? Who'da thunk it?
Of course you could also be entirely cynical about it, her motives, and the motives of her record company, but whatever. Even if it is a cynical ploy to sell records, I still think it's a better one than the usual, "OK she's 19 now, put her in a bikini and a pair of chaps and push those tits out!"
people
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music
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28 Nov 2011
You probably didn't know that the Muppet classic Mahna Mahna, the first version of which went out on the first season of Sesame Street in 1969, but which is best remembered as it was performed on The Muppet Show in 1976...
... was originally written and recorded for a 1968 Italian "soft core" documentary about the sexy shenannigans of the sexy Swedes called Sweden: Heaven And Hell. The documentary is just an excuse to show lesbians, wife swapping, drugs and other titillating goings ons. The song was used in a scene where a group of sexy Sedish girls go in a sexy group to have a sexy sauna wrapped in sexy towels. Well, I guess it was sexy in 1968, but now it all seems very tame and perfectly safe for work.
Slate Magazine has the full story of the Muppet's most enduring and catchy ditty.
(thanks Chris)
muppets
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28 Nov 2011
Marx famously said that "religion is the opium of the masses" though looking at this clip you'd think "ecstasy and speed" would have been closer to the mark. This has nothing to do with religion or worshipping a higher power - this is about getting off your head. These kids are simply getting out of their tiny minds on a natural high having worked themselves up nto a frenzy. Taking real ecstasy would be safer and less destructive to their mental health. I feel so sorry for these kids. Imagine if your life, your world view, your experience, was so narrow, so myopic, so stunted, so naive that you bought in to this crap?
religion poisons everything
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nuts
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28 Nov 2011
It's oddly fun. Turn down the lights, hunch over your keyboard, go HERE, and start typing.
(via @LiamGeraghty)
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fun
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