Nostalgia from PJTV

If you remember Creepy Crawlers (the original, with the metal molds and the open hot plate), this PJTV video is for you, from Bill Whittle.

My sisters and I made creepy crawlers in bulk, unsupervised, in our rec room in the basement. We didn't burn the house down, but we did burn our fingers. We also traveled in the car without a seat belt, rode our bikes bare-headed, slept in flammable jammies, ate unrefrigerated tuna sandwiches at the beach, played contentedly for hours with the mercury when the thermometer broke, and had our feet x-rayed at the shoe store. Now, as parents, we never let our kids ride unbuckled or bike without helmets. We'd use a cooler for that tuna and mayo now, though a warm tuna sandwich on Wonder Bread with a dash of sand was delicious. And our kids have never had their feet x-rayed (except in the ER). But the world was different then.

There is one area, though, in which we've become less regulated, and that's at the swimming pool. Remember bathing caps? They used to be required. That was rough. Not only were they ugly as sin, but they were really hard for a little girl with thick hair to get on her head, and uncomfortable once she finally did so.


Swim caps, as they're now called, are threatening to come back into style. Please, no. Let's not do this to our daughters, or ourselves. I love the fifties and sixties as much as anyone, but we don't want to open that door. Sinatra and Grace Kelly, yes; housecoats, hair curlers, and worst of all, gymsuits, NO.

(Gymsuit photo credit here)

CIA gives blue pills to aging chieftains in exchange for information

I guess this isn't a crime, but I'm pretty sure it has some victims: those "four younger women" who are the recipients of the chieftain's reinvigorated attentions. Think of these "younger" (how young?) wives as you read this. It takes all the fun out of this story.

The Afghan chieftain looked older than his 60-odd years, and his bearded face bore the creases of a man burdened with duties as tribal patriarch and husband to four younger women. His visitor, a CIA officer, saw an opportunity, and reached into his bag for a small gift.

Four blue pills. Viagra.

"Take one of these. You'll love it," the officer said. Compliments of Uncle Sam.

The enticement worked. The officer, who described the encounter, returned four days later to an enthusiastic reception. The grinning chief offered up a bonanza of information about Taliban movements and supply routes -- followed by a request for more pills.

* * * * *

"You didn't hand it out to younger guys, but it could be a silver bullet to make connections to the older ones," said one retired operative familiar with the drug's use in Afghanistan. Afghan tribal leaders often had four wives -- the maximum number allowed by the Koran -- and aging village patriarchs were easily sold on the utility of a pill that could "put them back in an authoritative position," the official said.

I wonder how old these wives are, and how it was they came to be married to the aging chieftain. Probably not by way of a western-style whirlwind romance or a friendship slowly blossoming into love and mutual respect. Much more likely a forced marriage between a young or very young woman and a man decades older. My heart goes out to these poor women as this man reasserts his "authority" over them.

Mark Steyn's complete Christmas (and Boxing Day) package

*Update: The following was quoted at the Steyn "reader of the day" link:

Our teenage boys, being red-blooded American males, were clearly suspicious about Mr. Steyn's "lifestyle" and weren't a bit reassured when Pundit told them that Steyn has written a book about musical theater.

Original post:

His cleverly Christmas-themed homepage includes links (just to name a few) to his great article on life as miracle, his hilarious review of Christmas how-to books, some words on the regrettable Adam Sandler, and his answer to the question: Where did Jingle Bells come from?

I can't mention Steyn and Christmas without saying something about the A Marshmallow World. Pundit ("I spent a dollar on that?") downloaded it for me. I made my children's lives a burden to them yesterday (what are mothers for?) by playing it a few times. Our teenage boys, being red-blooded American males, were clearly suspicious about Mr. Steyn's "lifestyle" and weren't a bit reassured when Pundit told them that Steyn has written a book about musical theater. In defense of Steyn's manhood, I'm going to send the following apologia pro Steyn to my 19 year old son:

Q: What is Mark?
A: Straight.
Q: I meant his nationality.
A: Canadian.
Q: Also his religion.
A: Mark is of Jewish descent, but was baptized a Catholic, confirmed an Anglican, and currently attends a small rural American Baptist Church. As John Podhoretz of The New York Post said, “You’re not Jewish or gay? But you wrote a book on musicals?”

May I add that he tirelessly battles Islamo-fascism, for heaven's sake?

Moving on to Boxing Day, Hogmanay, and the long Euletide. A few excerpts from Happy Christmas Bank Holiday Friday:

In America, the Christmas holiday is what it says: a holiday to observe Christmas. If it happens to fall on a Saturday or Sunday, tough. See you at work Monday morning. But across the Atlantic, if Christmas and New Year fall on the weekend, the ensuing weeks are eaten up by so many holidays they can’t even come up with names for them. I see from the well-named “Beautiful Ireland” calendar this newspaper sent me in lieu of a handsome bonus for calling the US elections correctly that January 3rd 2005 is a holiday in Ireland and Britain – the Morning After The Morning After Hogmanay – and the lucky Scots get January 4th off too – the First Hogtuesday After Hogmonday? Eventually, the entire Scottish economy will achieve the happy state of their enchanted village of Brigadoon and show up for one day every hundred years.

By 2050, the pimply young lad in lederhosen serving you at the charming beer garden will be singlehandedly supporting entire old folks’ homes. If tax rates were to be hiked commensurate to the decline in tax base and increase in welfare obligations, there would be no incentive at all to enter the (official) job market. Better to stay at school till 38 and retire at 39.

Europe has a psychological investment in longer holidays: the fact that they spell national suicide is less important than that they distinguish Europe from the less enlightened Americans.

Read the rest.

And remember, even though we're Americans, December 25 is only the First Day of Christmas. We have eleven more. Nothing is more endearing than to give tokens to your loved ones every day from Christmas to Epiphany. Here in the P&P household we had a Thinky-Geeky Christmas. The kids love the glow-in-the-dark smart mass (choose "alien ooze," so bright you could read by it), the helicopter (not broken yet! - reserve this for older kids), and the outlet wall safe ("I made a few practice holes in the wall, Dad").

See the USA in your Chevrolet

A must-read article by Mark Steyn about the decrepitude of the U.S. auto industry, the newspaper business, the states of California and New York, and the general marasmus of America. (Just learned that word today and couldn't wait to use it.) The jihad-fighting crooner writes:

See the USA from your Chevrolet: An hereditary legislature, a media fawning its way into bankruptcy, its iconic coastal states driving out innovators and entrepreneurs, the arrival of the new Messiah heralded only by the leaden dirge of “We Three Kings Of Ol’ Detroit Are/Seeking checks we traverse afar”, and Route 66 looking ever more like a one-way dead-end street to Bailoutistan. Boy, I sure could use a poem by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis right now, even one of the lesser-loved ones.

“I feel like I lost my country,” said the Hudson Institute’s Herbert London the other day, wondering whatever happened to the land of opportunity and dynamism.

We hear you. What a falling off was there.

But cheer up. There's always youtube, which provides us with this testimony to our past vitality:



And while we're on the subject of Dinah Shore . . . any excuse will do to post another Sinatra video.



h/t: Atlas Shrugs

Santa derangement syndrome

It's time to pull the plug on Santa Claus.

Not Christmas. Christmas is good. The birth of the Christ Child is the best thing that ever happened to humanity. Giving gifts is fine. St. Nicholas is admirable, but he bears about as much resemblance to our modern-day Santa Claus as Botticelli's Madonna of the Book resembles an inflatable nativity scene.

As to those well-meaning parents who try to upgrade Santa by superimposing St. Nicholas over him, their hearts are in the right place. But if they're still pretending to the kiddies that he's omniscient and omnipresent and personally brings them all those baubles, these parents might need to face the possibility that they've been co-opted by the Santa con.

But the fake gift-bringer is not the real issue. The real issues are:

• The "Santa is Real" nazis and the lies they tell (Santa Derangement Syndrome)
• Advertisements featuring Santa

You've met those irrational parents and newspaper columnists who get upset when the truth leaks out to their children, for whom they're working overtime to preserve the facade. At the same time, these adults often aggressively maintain that they, too, believe in Santa. Poor Virginia. She used an unreliable fact-checker.

They irrationally expect schoolmates to join them in the conspiracy to convince their children that Santa is Real. (He isn't.) The wrath they feel toward truth-telling parents and their Santa-outing kids is a sign of derangement.

Parenting tip: tell your children the truth. When kids have matured to the point where they require elaborate, detailed fabrications from their parents to prop up the tale about the Old Gent popping down their chimney, it's probably time to respect their intelligence and tell them the truth. Kids have an innate desire for what's real and true, and an instinct for smelling what isn't.

Also consider that, after you've bent over backwards to persuade your kids of the truth of something they suspect to be false, they may quite reasonably not trust you next time. This may be of special interest to Christian parents who see it as their responsibility to pass on to their kids their belief in a God who has supernatural powers, loves and watches over us, and knows when we're naughty and nice. (Sound like someone you know?) Your children may conclude that all that God stuff is just another fairy tale. Their motto might be "once burned, twice shy," or, "don't get fooled again."

But whether parents go along with the Santa story, and how hard they push it on their kids, is their business. What a parent can't control is whether others are willing to collude with them, especially when those others are under age ten; kids are too honest and forthright for that. Asking a child to knowingly participate in a falsehood violates his integrity. One may try to encourage discretion on his part, but discretion is tricky for adults, let alone kids. Try explaining to a child who was never taught (aka, brainwashed) to believe in Santa just why other parents try so hard to convince their kids that he's real. They won't understand, and it will be hard for them to play along with their peers who do "believe." Most parents don't want to encourage duplicity in their kids.

Then there's the assertion by grown-ups that they "believe" in Santa Claus. Thank goodness they don't mean it. The classic adult Santa-ist holds all belief in "unseen things" as equally valid. This is a false and potentially subversive proposition. Belief in fairies dancing on the lawn, flying pigs, or a man in a red suit coming down everyone's chimney at once is not the same as belief in "love and generosity and devotion." The latter are real; the former are not, and adults know they are not.

We know what they're getting at. They want to encourage imagination and a childlike belief in good but unseen things. Excellent. The best things in life are unseeable. And imagination is a great and important gift. But believing in the reality of the imagination is quite different from believing in the reality of the things you have imagined. And here's the most important point: putting faith, hope, and charity on the same level as dancing fairies or talking horses risks undermining a child's belief in love, hope, courage, honor, and truth itself.

The noxious ads will have to wait for another post.

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