Keiko sent me the Mindset List for the class of 2017, the incoming freshman at Beloit College.  The point is to give people the students’ frame of reference, building the lens through which they see the world.  These kids have never known a world with a living Jerry Garcia.  I was in my grandmother’s apartment when I learned that Jerry died.  I got on the phone immediately with my boyfriend.  Jerry was dead and THESE FRESHMAN WEREN’T EVEN BORN YET.

Their whole lives, the Olympics have been every two years.  They’ve never had a four year wait between Olympics.  They have always had USB ports on their computers — WE DIDN’T EVEN HAVE COMPUTERS.  Most of them have never had chicken pox.

The list made me feel very very old.

I looked at the list of the people who started college in 1998 since it was the first Mindset List they created, but even that one made me feel old.  Those kids never had records.  They don’t remember the Cold War or the Challenger blowing up.

They think our Star Wars special effects are “pathetic.”  Fuck them!

These lists have made me become very ornery, yelling in a cranky manner at the screen about my uphill walk to school both ways.  And how we liked it.

*******

The twins and I have started the fifth Harry Potter and joined the Order of the Phoenix.  I know I originally said that I would wait until they were much older for Book 5.  But I started thinking about how books 1 – 3 go together in terms of scariness.  And then there is a steep drop to 4 and 5.  And then another steep drop to 6 and 7.  So if they could do 4, they could also do 5.  Whereas in 6, we start getting into the idea of murder splitting a soul and the concept of what makes a person take another person’s life (and the fact that there are people out there who kill not because they have a problem with the other person but because they enjoy the act of killing).  And 6 kicks off that idea that there is nowhere that is completely safe and no one who will always be there to protect you, which I think are very scare thoughts for a child.  So… yeah… drawing a hard line for a bit longer with Book 6, but allowing Book 5 to happen now.

I am so happy to be back with Harry, even though we were totally grooving on the Kairos.  We’ll come back to you, Murry family.

*******

This is it: LAST TWO DAYS.  This is over on Saturday.  It’s the last chance to get Measure of Love at $1.99. (Amazon featured it as a monthly deal for the Kindle for the entire month of August.)  I would deeply appreciate any help you could give in getting word out about the promotion.  Telling a friend, Facebooking it, tweeting it, blogging about it, etc.

If you’ve ever thought to yourself, “I sure would like to do something nice for Melissa,” helping me spread word for these final two days would be it.  That would be the nice thing you could do that I would really really appreciate.

*******

And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “Not Just Baby” (Life as Two)
• “Grief Intelligence: a Primer” (Huffington Post)
• “Should We Stop Blaming Facebook for Our Unhappiness?” (BlogHer) — thank you, Lori!
• “Next Chapter: Surrogacy” (Moonfish and Buttermilk)
• “Dear Friends of Waiting Adoptive Moms: Some Things to Know (also, we’re sorry)” (Wonderment, etc)
• “Knowing Our Limits; Even When it Hurts” (Where the *Bleep* is Our Stork?)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Stupid Broken Eggs has a post about her mother’s recipe for gravy (which we call tomato sauce); how her mother gave her the card with the recipe written out, and the first time she made the recipe back for her mother.  She writes, “Will my son or daughter ever come to be? Will I ever get to pass this recipe on to them? Will they ever get to make their version of The Gravy for me?”  Since she doesn’t know the answer to that, she has turned the recipe over to the Internet, giving all of us the opportunity to share in her family.  I LOVE this post.  And yes, I’m going to try my hand at the recipe; sans meat.

Invincible Spring has a post about the panda twins born at the National Zoo.  Admittedly, I only heard about the one panda who lived.  There was another panda who was born still.  She writes, “And when I read that she groomed her dead baby for 17 minutes before relinquishing it to keepers for an autopsy, not only did I cry; I felt I got it, a little.”  My heart hurt on her play with the word “endangered” at the end.

Inconception has a post about how she thought about people living child-free after infertility before she made the decision herself, and how she views them now.  I love, love, love the end: “The reality of it is, now that I’ve made it, walking away from treatment is one of the bravest decisions I have ever made in my life.”

And lastly, Battlefish cracked me up with her post about bra shopping.  As someone who would go to the ends of the earth for a good bra, she’s hit upon one of my favourite topics.  I too am guilty of holding onto bras I know I will never wear again.  Now I’m just waiting for the update to find out if the bra was any good.

The roundup to the Roundup: The Mindset List made me feel old.  Started Harry Potter 5 with the twins.  Measure of Love is on sale for only two more days (and I’d love your help continuing to get word out).  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between August 23rd and 30th) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week?  Read the original open thread post here.

It’s funny that A brought up Adele because she was the example I gave Josh when we were talking about the Miley Cyrus performance at the VMAs.  For the record, I wasn’t upset with her performance because I think you get what you get when you turn on MTV.  I expect MTV to be exactly like that, and they once again delivered.  We personally skip that channel accordingly — our kids don’t watch the VMAs.  That is partially because you get performances like Miley Cyrus’s and partially because like MTV itself, it really isn’t about music anymore.  Music is shunted to the background.  At the forefront are the lights and pyrotechnics and special effects and computer capabilities and dancing.

So I wasn’t upset in the same way that I’m not upset by the idea of strippers or strip clubs.  That’s sort of what the VMAs were in that moment; a televised strip club performance without the pole.  Woman onstage, scantily clad, shaking her body and rubbing her crotch so you think about sex.  Not really such a big deal unless you’re morally opposed to strip clubs, and I’m not morally opposed to them even though I choose not to go to them.  I don’t expect anything different from strip clubs OR MTV at this point; I think both have established exactly what they’re trying to sell.

So Josh and I were talking over dinner.  I watched Miley’s performance online (in order to rage properly about the Daft Punk lyrics that weren’t), he didn’t.  I think he should just so he can stop asking me to remind him what twerking is.  But we were also talking about the comparisons that were being made between Justin Timberlake and Miley Cyrus, both Disney kids who grew up to take very difference performance paths.

It isn’t a fair comparison.  Justin Timberlake has a penis.  Because he as a penis, he is allowed to sing and be judged by the quality of his voice, the complexity of his lyrics, and the skill of his delivery.  And that is all.  No one talks about whether Justin Timberlake has love handles or whether his hair is sexy or whether his clothes are too form-fitting or not form-fitting enough.  His weight could go up or down, and unless it was a remarkable difference, no one would comment.  And even then, only to worry about an underlying problem.

And yet Lady Gaga’s weight goes up and down and that is worthy of not just being a footnote in an article, but the article itself.

*******

Whenever the topic of women being objectified in order to succeed in the music industry is thrown out there for discussion, people trot out Adele.  Look, they say, she is highly successful.  It’s all about her voice.

And yes, Adele is a superstar who has plowed her own path.  While her physical attributes are discussed just as much as her music, she commands big attention.  Sure, Huffington Post has a tag on their site for “adele weight,” but perhaps what we all mean by trotting Adele out there as our example is that she is not bending to critics in the same way that other women have in the past.  She keeps demanding that people make it about her voice, lyrics, and delivery.

But, as A pointed out, the larger problem is that for every one Adele, there are 17,000 Miley Cyruses.  Somewhere along the way, the music industry got the message that we want all those Miley Cyruses.  If that concept didn’t sell, if people didn’t tune in, if it didn’t get attention, they would stop producing it.

Sex sells.  Drama sells.  Controversy sells.

*******

I think it’s clear to see this within blogging as well.  There are people who blog to keep their family informed about their kids, and others who use their blog as a scrapbook.  I’m not referring to those bloggers, but rather, those of us (myself included) who write for an amorphous audience.  We send words out there and hope someone reads them.

Speaking in generalizations (as opposed to individual cases), what are the big female bloggers known for vs. male bloggers?  Getting fired, estranged from family, having an ill child, divorce.  We are attracted to people who allow their lives to all hang out.  The more honest, the better.  The more drama, the better.  We tune into their lives in the same way we watch soap operas, treating these very real people as if they’re characters.  The more naked they blog, the more interested we get.

And yes, naked blogging is a good thing, but not all raw and honest blogging is naked in the same way.  We know that people respond to nakedness, and some people take that to mean being authentic; true to themselves and honest in their portrayal of their world.  And others take nakedness to mean putting everything out there: even if it could get you in trouble or hurt another person or are thoughts the universe really doesn’t need.

It’s similar to the nude portraits hanging in the National Gallery.  They present a naked body, just as Miley Cyrus presented her half-naked body the other night.  And yet no one would say that Miley Cyrus and a Velázquez painting accomplish the same thing.

*******

Because there is little guidance (it’s not as if our mothers were blogging and have passed down their thoughts about the online world to our generation) and because humans are prone to repeating what we see around us already works, a lot of naked blogging turns more into a Miley Cyrus performance than a Velázquez or — to go back to Miley’s musical contemporary — Adele. We all know how to create Mileys hence why so many Mileys exist on the music scene; women with half-decent voices who can also dance and have a lot of confidence to draw the eye who are also willing to strip down into little clothing to catch your attention.  Whereas we don’t really know how to recreate Adeles, hence why so few of them exist.  They’re the anomaly; the wildly successful woman who breaks out of the mold.

The same thing happens within blogging.  Yes, there are the Adeles of the blogging world who write with honesty, presenting a truthful view of their life, laying themselves semi-bare and examining their foibles and their triumphs.  They conserve certain aspects of their life, and speak with circumspect so they rarely upset other people.  They hold back enough for themselves so they don’t give away their entire being.  They have writing talent, and people read them in enormous numbers.  But it’s hard to recreate that in another blogger.  What works for one doesn’t work for another because they don’t have that same je ne sais quoi.  But we do know how to make a Miley-of-a-writer.  All you have to do is bitch about other people, detail the intimate, no-holds-barred moments of your relationships, embarrass the subject of your post, and do it all without your subject’s permission.  That’s Miley Cyrus-like naked blogging.

For every Adele of the blogosphere, there are 17,000 Miley Cyrus’s of the blogosphere who think that the only way to get attention is to take it all off.  To hold nothing back.  To bend to what other people deem blogging trends and shape their site to match what others want.

I can count the number of bloggers I read who are Adele-like AND have a readership in the thousands on one hand.  I mean, most bloggers I read fit that Adele-like description in online comportment, but they’re read by only a hundred or so people.  They write like an Adele, but they’re unknowns, like a blues singer playing at a bar vs. a megastar booking the Barclay Center.  The vast majority of widely-read bloggers I know (and yes, this is based on my limited scope of the blogosphere; you may read a very different section of the blogosphere and have walked away with a different point-of-view) — meaning their readership is in thousands and above — are more Miley-like in the way they write.

There’s nothing wrong with that, per se — remember, I didn’t have a problem with Miley’s performance.  But based on the way we discuss the online world, I get a feeling more of us hope to be Adeles than Mileys.

I know I do.

*******

How many women do you read who write about the world around them vs. what is happening in their house?  Every reference I’ve seen from a man regarding naked blogging refers to business.  Every reference I’ve seen from a woman regarding naked blogging refers to our personal story.

Think about how many men provide commentary on current events, popular culture, or specific topics such as technology.  How many women do that and hit it big?

Women are told to make it personal, to put their lives out there (as opposed to their opinions).  Even food bloggers are encouraged (for good reason: stories sell) to make their recipes personal.  Tell a story.  Explain how much their kids like this recipe for chicken nuggets.  And once you get to general diarists, forget it.  You mine blog posts from your life, and if your life isn’t very exciting at the moment, you can create linkbait, as the Bloggess says.

Women can get a big audience by being naked with their words and grinding against topics, a la Miley Cyrus.  And to be fair, I can only think of one widely-read male blogger who has built his audience on providing that personal story and vulnerability.

For the most part, it seems that men get popular for their thoughts and women get popular for their drama, in the same way that Justin Timberlake can get attention by his voice and Miley Cyrus can get attention by her gyrations.

This isn’t as simple as refusing to watch a channel or not reading Miley Cyrus-like bloggers or asking female singers to put some clothes on.  I’m talking about this problem without offering any solutions because I don’t believe there are any solutions at this moment except to overhaul entirely how we back women into corners.  It’s a problem that is much larger than the VMAs or strip clubs or drama-filled blogs.

At it’s core, it’s a statement by the world how — as a whole — it views women.

Even though there is no solution that can be carried out by a single person or even a large group of people, I still think it’s worth discussing, especially with the twins.  I want them to figure out ways to get attention that don’t include being objectified, even if they hold the power in that objectification by inviting people to objectify them on their own terms.  I want them to think about what they’re sending out there, and whether they’re holding anything back for themselves.  I don’t want them to give to the world in a way that depletes them; that takes away.  I want them to give to the world in a way that is sustainable and replenishing.

And perhaps that is the most obvious distinction between the Miley Cyruses of the world vs. the Adeles.  Miley gave away all that sex appeal, but what did she get back?  Only the message to give away more sex appeal.  Adele gave away her music, her thoughts, her voice.  And the message she receives is to continue presenting her talent.  The same goes for blogging as well.  If you’re getting back a message to present more drama, more vitriol, more information than you’re truly comfortable sharing, you’re writing in a way that will ultimately deplete rather than sustain.

And I think we’d all like to be here for a good, long time.  So write sustainably.

So when Josh and I threw “Blurred Lines” off the CD, we were left without a song of summer.  Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky” was the obvious back-up song, but Josh and I couldn’t in good conscience buy it since it was obviously a celebration of drug use.

She’s up all night to get stoned
She’s up all night to get stoned
She’s up all night to get high
I’m up all night to get lucky

It was just as rape-y as “Blurred Lines.” This man wanted to make sure the nameless woman’s drug-addled mind was incapable of sound thought, and then he would have sex with her  Apparently that’s what “getting lucky” means to kids today.

As disturbing as this was, Josh and I still found ourselves singing this around the kitchen after the twins went to bed.

Image: Kitzero Router via Flickr

With all the brouhaha over Miley Cyrus’s performance at the VMAs, I couldn’t believe that NO ONE WAS TALKING ABOUT DAFT PUNK’S DRUG-INFUSED ODE TO NON-CONSENSUAL SEX.  Yes, she rubbed her crotch on stage, but Daft Punk was providing G-d-knows-what pharmaceuticals to some poor woman so he could take advantage of her.  And that, THAT, was a contender for the song of summer?  Daft Punk was just a sexualized Cheech and Chong with robot heads, and NO ONE wants to think about a sexualized Cheech and Chong with their cannabis-studded beards, even if all that facial hair is underneath a metallic mask.

In order to write a scathing post about our double standard when it comes to male vs. female gyrators (does anyone actually sing anymore, or are all musical artists now twerkers first and vocalists second?), I Googled the Daft Punk lyrics so I could ream them out about their love of passing girls quaaludes.

Oh.

We’re up all night to the sun
We’re up all night to get some
We’re up all night for good fun
We’re up all night to get lucky

That’s not really about drug use at all.

So, uh, sorry, Daft Punk.  As you were.

I am sort of proud of myself that I’ve moved into the realm of actually knowing enough about Candy Crush that I can pass along advice.  As of a few weeks ago, I was begging for strategies from all of you.  So since I’ve just passed and been asked how I passed these levels, I thought I’d throw it up here in case you need help passing level 165 or 167 of Candy Crush.

Level 165:

The hard thing here is collecting enough blue ones.  Everything else will pretty much happen naturally as you match the blue ones.  So ignore all other tasks and focus on blues.  If you can get a speckled doughnut and combine it with a blue, great.  If you can get a speckled doughnut and combine it with a striped of any colour so most of the board gets changed, great.  And if you can get a speckled doughnut and clear a dominant colour off the board so more blues fall onto the board, great too.

That said, the order in which to worry about things is bombs first, chocolate second, blues third.  In other words, take care of those bombs because you only get a few moves to do so.  Don’t let the chocolate build up on top or no new candies will fall onto the board.  So take care of those two things minimally and then concentrate on blues.  That’s your focus: bombs, chocolate, then blues.

It took me a lot of tries to get a board where enough blues fell onto the board in the first place.  Sometimes there is nothing you can do with this board because 99 blues don’t show up in the first place.

Level 167:

The first time I played this board, the first move made a speckled doughnut.  “Easy board!” I thought in my head.  LIKE A FOOL.

Here’s the thing: the chocolate won’t start until you break those four pieces that are in front of the four chocolate machines.  So take your time and clear most of the center first.

Next, if you can, clear one side at a time.  Once you’ve popped the jelly, it doesn’t matter if chocolate grows back over the space.  You will still win even if you have chocolate on the board, just as long as that chocolate isn’t covering unpopped jelly.  So clear one side entirely (if you can keep the other side closed off), and then pretty much ignore it while you do the other side.  The hardest jellies to pop are the ones in front of each machine.  The easiest jellies to pop are the middle three rows that run down the center of the board.

So for this board, your strategy is clear the middle, and then tackle each side, one at a time.  If you can get a speckled doughnut and a striped, you’ll clear a lot of jelly at once.  Or a striped/wrapped combo.

What do you do if a horizontal striped candy opened up both sides of the board at the same time?  Then you have an issue of chocolate coming from two directions.  In that case, zigzag back and forth, doing a move on the left side and then a move on the right to keep the chocolate at bay and the jellies popping.

Currently: I’m on Level 181, and I’m happy to go backwards and explain how I did any board before that.  Sometimes it was stupid luck but other times, there was actual thought involved.

Welcome back to IComLeavWe. It stands for International Comment Leaving Week, but if you say it aloud, doesn’t it sounds like “I come; [but] leave [as a] we”? And that’s sort of the point. Blogging is a conversation and comments should be honoured and encouraged. I like to say that comments are the new hug–a way of saying hello, giving comfort, leaving congratulations.

Here is the vital information, pure and simple (a more detailed set of rules follows below the list):

• The list opens the 1st of every month. It remains open until the 21st. You can add yourself at any point. The list is open to everyone in the blogosphere–blog writers and/or blog readers.
• Add yourself to the list by filling out this form after adding the icon below: The September list is now closed.  The October list will open on 9/27.
  
• Click here to cut-and-paste this bit of code to add to your sidebar (if you have the old code from another month, remove it and replace it with this one). You need to add the icon or a link to the current list on your blog (see below) and will not be added until it’s up.
• Commenting kicks off every month on the 21st. Please mark it somewhere (calendar, post-it note taped to your computer…), though I will be sending out an email reminder on the 20th. Commenting week runs from the 21st to the 28th. Every day, leave 5 comments and return 1 comment for a total of 6 comments. You are highly encouraged to choose the blogs you comment on from the participants list below, but this is not required.
• I will send a second email on the 28th to remind you to remove the icon from your blog.
• Read below if you want to find out about Iron Commenters.
• The commenting ends on the 28th. We catch our breath and the whole thing starts again the next month on the 1st. Drop in and out according to what is happening in your life between the 21st and the 28th.

1. Stirrup Queens (twins, books, writing)
2. Invincible Spring (recurrent loss, IVF, life)
3. The 2 Week Wait (infertility motherhood humor)
4. One Step at a Time (baby after infertility)
5. Stupid Broken Eggs (infertility, faith, marriage )
6. Dangled Carat (relationships, dating, marriage)
7. Feeling Beachie (life, humor, cats)
8. Comatised (love, life, happiness)
9. Our New Normal with Z (adoption, family, life)
10. Inconception (child-free for now)
11. Breathe Gently (new-mum, IVF, PCOS)
12. Reading Each Page (parenting after infertility)
13. Waiting for Baby (pregnancy, PCOS, thyroid)
14. Airplanes From Heaven (stillbirth, faith, living children)
15. BattleFish (parenting after infertility)
16. My journey through infertility, pregnancy & loss (infertility, loss, pregnancy)
17. Where the Bleep Is Our Stork (ttc, pcos, truth)
18. Baby On Mind (embryo adoption, infertility, 40+)
19. Penguins of mine (infertility, loss, drawing)
20. Old Lady and No Baby (pregnant with twins, egg donor)
21. How I Spend My Dash (twins, parenting, life)
22. A Little Bit More (infertility, life, pcos)
23. Life of an Army Wife (donor gametes, army, crafting)
24. InfertilityLand Is Not Like Disneyland (infertility, loss, progress)
25. Mama Asterisk (adoption, balancing life)
26. In Due Time (faith, hope, health)
27. Faire Faire (iui, life, etc.)
28. Just Another Infertility Blog (early pregnancy after infertility and loss)
29. Hobbit-ish Thoughts & Ramblings (diabetes, books, parenting after IF/RPL)
30. Emma in Mommyland (SAHM, toddler, pregnancy)
31. Creating a Family (infertility, adoption, adoptive parenting)
32. My Journey to Motherhood (uterine malformation, UU, life)
33. Our Journey to Cameroon (ministry, faith, pregnant after loss)
34. Gypsy Mama (IUI, adoption, life)
35. Ask An Infertile (infertility, pregnancy loss, ttc)
36. Ready Now To See it Your Way (miscarriage,marriage, kids)
37. Dogs Aren’t Kids (infertility mfi rants)
38. Two Adults, One Child (secondary infertility, parenting, running)
39. In Quest of a Binky Moongee (TTC, IVF, faith)
40. Sensitive Ginger (infertility, hippie stuff)
41. ImagesByCW (photography, fine art, travel)
42. Work is for Suckers (IUI, loss, books)
43. Dragondreamer’s Lair (parenting, crafts/DIY, secondary infertility)
44. Life in the White House (triplets, life, creating)
45. Sweet Dreams are Made of This (waiting to adopt)
46. Stepping Stones (step-parenting, newly pregnant)
47. Recurrent Loss and Moving Forward (surrogacy, grieving, loss of fertility)
48. Baby Makin’ (PCOS, TTC baby #1)
49. Wistfulgirl’s World (fostering, adoption, life)
50. Poemfish (adoption, parenting, personal growth crap)
51. The September list is now closed.  The October list will open on 9/27.

Q: What if I miss a day?

A: Catch up the next day by doubling your comments–12 comments instead of 6.

Q: What if I have two blogs? Can I sign up twice, listing both blogs?

A: Yes, but you also need to double your comments. If you have two blogs listed, you should be leaving 12 comments per day.

Q: What is an Iron Commenter?

A: Not for the faint-of-heart. People who wish to be an Iron Commenter and be entered on the Iron Commenter honour roll need to leave a comment on every blog on the participants list (exceptions are blogs that require you to have a special log-in, such as some LiveJournal accounts or other similar situations). You can spread out this commenting any way you wish over the whole week, but the final comment needs to be left by midnight on the 28th (EST). Reaching Iron Commenter status is done on an honour system. Please email me if you earn Iron Commenter status so I can add you to the wall of honour.

Q: Why do I have to add that bit of code to my sidebar?

A: The code is the latest icon (the icon changes colour every month so you know that you’re on the right list). This month, the icon is red, the next month it will be orange, etc. The reason is two-fold: (1) it enables more people to find out about IComLeavWe and (2) it gives you easy access to the current list once the commenting week actually begins and better ensures that you’ll use it. Too many times, people sign up and forget to actually do IComLeavWe and this icon gives you a daily reminder (with the dates on it) every time you open your own blog. The icon is linked back to the current list. On the 28th, remove the icon from your blog. A new one will be created for the next month.

Q: It’s the 23rd and I just saw this for the first time on my friend’s blog! I want to join the list–why can’t I?

A: Because IComLeavWe happens every month, once the list is closed, it’s closed. If you’re finding out about this on the 23rd, you can’t join the current month. But leave yourself a note to check back in a week on the 1st and you can sign up for the next month.

Q: You said the list closes on the 21st. Well, it’s still the 21st where I am. Why aren’t you moving my information onto the list?

A: All dates and times are U.S. Eastern Standard Time (UTC/GMT -5 hours). The list closes around 11 p.m. EST on the 21st.

Q: What if no one comments on my blog and I have no comments to return?

A: Well, that really doesn’t happen for the most part, but in that case, simply choose another blog and add an additional comment. The goal is to hit 6 comments daily as a minimum. Going over that is fantastic and encouraged.

Q: Mel, my question wasn’t covered at all. What do I do?

A: Email me; I’m quite friendly. It helps to place “IComLeavWe” in the subject line. You could also check this post which contains the history of IComLeavWe and see if you can glean anything there.

Looking for the comment section? It has been closed on this post. Use the form in the directions to add yourself to the list.