So, I was deliberating between two Big Heavy Posts for today – hmm… shall I pontificate on Religion and Childrearing, or deliver My Big Thoughts on Judith Warner’s Perfect Madness? – when, during my early morning fave blog troll, I came across Kristen’s bladder-stimulating spoof of my writing:

OK. Go on. Have a look. But come right back! I have pictures!

Don’tcha all be slammin’ on my ma, yo. She be teaching me MAD words. Check it:

Jack and Jill ascended the acclivity
To retrieve a brazier of the liquid that descends from the clouds as rain and is the major constituent of all living matter.
Jack toppled bottomward
And fractured his cranium
And Jill came plummeting post-hence.

Back now? Good. So, as I was saying, I was going to devote today’s post to the further enlightenment of the blogosphere, until I realized that a) I couldn’t possibly do so without coming off as a spoof of myself, b) to do so would risk revealing to new readers that I am not as smart as Kristen might think I am, and c) the coffee that I made this morning is CRAP and undrinkable and I cannot spin the big words unless I am caffeinated.

So what y’all get instead? Random nonsense! And hats!

What Bad Mother has been thinking about today:

1) Kevin Federline. Apparently, the media is to blame for his foray into, um, musical performance. ‘Cause, really, what other choice did he have? What kind of role model to his children – the new one and the old ones that were left with the (pregnant at the time) wife he abandoned – would he be if he went and got a real job instead of whoring off of his baby-dropping celebrity wife?

Why do I waste brain cells on this sort of thing? Because I have an obsessive interest in the decline of Western Civilization. Whether it’s K-Fed (‘but you can call me daddy’ ew ew ew), or David Hasselhoff (yes, I have a grim fascination with David Hassehoff. I just don’t understand. K-fed, sadly, I understand: untold numbers of greasy slacker losers look at him and think Yes, DUDE and similar numbers of girls with low self-esteem think he’s hot. So, sad, but, sadly, understandable. David Hasselhoff? Just do not get it. Just don’t. Have you seen his work? Yeah, I know, Baywatch was the Miami Vice of the nineties and so apparently there’s some pop cultural import there, tho’ I don’t see it, and apparently it can be read as a family ensemble in the tradition of the Waltons so maybe it’s just good wholesome fun. But this? Please), or the fact that somebody, somewhere, thinks that Sharon Stone is still a sex symbol – it’s all evidence that we’re all going to hell in a cultural handbasket. And I’m taking notes.

2) What to name WonderBaby’s new playmate. She looks pretty gothy and I-see-dead-peopleish, which is why I like her, and so I thought about naming her Siouxsie. Or maybe Miss Jessel, from The Turn of the Screw… Any suggestions?

3) How and why it is that I am turning into a beer pig. I used to be the martiniest girl around (shaken, so dry as to be parched, with olive), when I wasn’t appreciating the finer Bordeaux varietals, preferably those with philosophic provenance. Which is to say, liquor snob. But now that one martini gets me sloppy drunk and gives me a Gulliverian hangover (those bulbous-headed Lilliputians that Kristen had me imagining? Hangover midgets banging on my head. In fact, that whole paragraph was a description of my martini hangover) and wine can compromise milk supply. But beer… ah, beer. Sweet, dark nectar of the gods. Can increase milk supply, and one pint glass of a rich creamy dark can last an hour or more and so hangover risk is minimal. And I’ve developed a taste for it. Guinness, Kilkenny, Belgian Lambecs brewed by Trappist monks… yum. Love it. But am struggling with transformation of my drinker identity: beer is for frat boys, pool players and aficionados of team sports, is it not? And I am none of these. I am a lactating mother. I am drinking a Fuller’s London Porter right now. Bring on the beer!

4) Whether or not to go to Blogher. I would love to, I really would – learn more about this writing medium that I have become addicted to! Meet cool, literate, funny moms! Weekend vacation! – and Husband is saying go for it, but… still ambivalent. I’m new at this, for one, so it seems ambitious. Also? I’m not very good at conferences where I don’t deliver a paper (if you plug ‘Machiavelli’ into the subject search here, you’ll find HBM’s alter academic ego), thereby establishing my membership in The Group and so minimizing imposter syndrome.) I’ve been known to hug the odd corner with tongue in throat when in rooms with people that I don’t know (OK, I’m exaggerating. I know how work a room. But my inner shy girl hugs the corners and then obsesses about what people in the room thought of me.) And? I won’t be attending an academic conference this year, and I already have issues about eschewing academic writing in favour of blogging, so to head off to a blogging conference while skipping APSA (which I swore swore swore that I would attend, even if I didn’t present a paper) seems irresponsible. And, perhaps, like a detour that will take me an even greater distance from the work that I ‘should’ be doing. But! So tempting…

5) How many hats a baby should have. We’re at about 14 right now. But people, she’s bald. OK, fuzzy. Pale, yellow Easter chick fuzz. So we rock the hats.

Don’tcha be funnin’ at my head, yo. Gots me some BRAINS.