The World According to Prudence
August 5, 2009, by Prudence Baird
NASCAR is not a sport, Ann Coulter is not a woman, 98 percent of people who drink diet sodas are fat and there is no such thing as a healthy tan.
People who say, “To tell the truth…” are about to lie. Ditto for people who begin with “Truthfully,…” and “To be honest,….”
When an armed, confrontational policeman can enter your home without a search warrant, handcuff and arrest you for freaking out that he’s even there to begin with, our nation is already suffering from a more insidious form of government than the threat of a government willing to offer each and every American universal healthcare.
Anti-abortion protesters who bring their small children to demonstrate against women seeking safe and legal medical abortions deserve to have their children taken away from them and given to families who really care about children’s mental and emotional health.
Whenever anyone says, “It’s not about the money…” it really is all about the money. Really.
If you are married with very young children and your spouse earns a decent wage, working just to pay for extras like health club membership, a nice wardrobe, spa visits, fancy vacations, a luxury car and a nanny is silliness unless you believe that your time on this earth is best spent being a one-person stimulus package rather than investing in the most important human beings on earth, your children.
If people did their own cleaning and yard care, going to gyms to work up a sweat and stay in shape would be unnecessary.
The United States would be a healthier country if homeowners used the land and water devoted to their lawns to grow edible plants and food.
The surest way to cause family strife is to die and leave a pile of money and property to be divided between two or more heirs.
Sending children to preschool and childcare is the end of parents’ good health.
Corn syrup is killing Americans. Health insurance companies are working hard to kill off anyone that corn syrup missed.
The sound-byte mentality that began with Sesame Street laid the groundwork for Fox News and Twitter.
Science is real; the stories in the Bible can provide useful moral lessons but are not real and should not be cited in the same breath as scientific truths.
As long as 12-year-old girls are sold into marriage, as long as any woman’s worth is determined by her ability to bear children, as long as women are stoned for being with men who are not their husbands or relatives, all of humanity is in danger.
There is an inverse relationship between how much a wedding or bar/bat mitzvah costs and the amount of lasting joy it brings to those being feted.
When a woman driver and a man driver pull up to an intersection at the same time facing different directions, it doesn’t matter who is to the right. The man will go first.
Every home in a sunny climate should come equipped with a clothesline, clothespins and solar panels. And people who use them should get tax credits.
The words “double” and “wide” when used together are shorthand for all that is sad, truly sad, about America.
Having a full-time nanny care for you children when you don’t have a job or a debilitating disease is narcissism or laziness or both. In either case, you have too much money and should give it to me.
August 5th, 2009 at 6:26 am
LOVE LOVE LOVE this.
August 5th, 2009 at 6:48 am
I laughed yet felt shamed at the same time: I’m putting up a clothesline ASAP. This post is suitable for framing!
August 5th, 2009 at 7:30 am
I should have solar panels. I would like to have solar panels and will invest at some point when I have the cash. And I would get tax credits. But I can get a clothes line and will. This week.
Our growing season is short (7,000 feet). Not having Mr. Green Jeans knowledge I missed the small window to plant. But I am putting in a raised bed to not miss it next year. I can learn. I don’t however have a lawn. I have been pushing a wheel barrow around, shoveling and such and sweating A LOT!
August 5th, 2009 at 7:34 am
what’s wrong with double wide trailers?
August 5th, 2009 at 7:36 am
Mellimel, the clothes line is easy–an under $5 investment and your clothes smell great and have a natural sunshiney starch to them. Towels, however, are misery!
Solar panels should be made affordable and easy to use for even the most backwards Luddites among us. Why not have some portable, store-able pop-open affair that can be plugged into a wall socket and reverse-feed your home’s own electric grid? We’re a nation of inventors, why can’t someone do this? I know it can be done.
I’m not sure what the answer is when it comes to growing food. I did everything right this year, but Mother Nature dumped 20 inches of rain in June and July. Tomatoes and strawberries rotted before ripening, and the brocolli just gave up altogether and returned to earth.
I only wish I could send some of this rain to Los Angeles where they need it bigtime.
August 5th, 2009 at 7:37 am
I think, perhaps, double and wide are being used metaphorically?
August 5th, 2009 at 7:59 am
Pru for President! My tomatoes are just coming in, I have yellow, red, grape, Roma, heirloom… they are delicious. I’ve saved some of the peppers, squash and cucumbers from the rabbits. I have the clothesline in my basement so that it’s all year round drying here on the Plains, otherwise my clothes would freeze and break for nine months. Lawns are stupid; feeding, weeding and “greening” lawns is moronic. I blame the Europeans and the Romantic art movement which glorified fantasy landscapes filled with shepherdesses and swains. The rich were consumed with creating sweeping grassy areas surrounding their manors, mansions, castles, chateaux and filling them with grazing herds of trophy sheep. Cut down on the mowing,but who can resist a handsome swain with a scythe? Good stuff Pru.
August 5th, 2009 at 8:13 am
Pru’s world is my world only more articulate, keenly observed and better-written. I’ll never forget when at a pro-choice demonstration in the late ’80s (I think I was with you Pru and Carine too) when a woman with a carload of children (five to be exact and all under ten years old) pulled up, handed me a red rose and told me abortion was a sin. Not one of those kids was wearing a seatbelt. How’s that for protecting innocent children!
Each one of your observations could be a blog post in and of itself. From NASCAR to nannies, corn syrup to clotheslines (I think you’ve started a trend there) —brilliant! And you’re right, Ann Coulter is not a woman—she’s a wolf in women’s clothing.
August 5th, 2009 at 8:21 am
tim, why are you such a trouble-maker?
First of all, the manufacture of trailers is extraordinarily toxic according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, with workers highly likely to be injured and/or subject to carcinogenic substances. Living in mobile homes, as much as I am sure you would love to do, would subject you to breathing in formaldehyde, which is causally related to any number of health problems from asthma to birth defects and cancer. For more on the toxicity of LIVING in double-wides, we turn to Toxicity Letters (a scientific journal):
“Formaldehyde was found to be present in 100% of the mobile homes and at the highest mean concentration (167 ppb). The remaining organic chemicals were all present at much lower mean concentrations (less than 10 ppb) and at varying frequencies (2-95%)…A review of the literature revealed that 4 of the chemicals tested, formaldehyde, styrene, tetrachloroethylene and benzene, have been shown to be animal and/or human carcinogens. Thus, formaldehyde is not the only genotoxin present in the air of mobile homes but because it was present in the air of all mobile homes tested at much higher concentrations than the other organic chemicals, formaldehyde should be considered one of the major potential genotoxic hazards present in the air of mobile homes.”
Are you satisfied?
And rosemary, good point. leave it to an English teacher to find the metaphor in everything. (And can you believe my husband?)
August 5th, 2009 at 9:54 am
We put Katrina survivors in double-wides and many of them are there still. The Ann Coulters of the world make all women look bad. Last year I removed my lawn and replaced it with slate and pea gravel and four planting beds. I put in lavender which does quite well in our semi-arid climate and it looks really cool. I really must put in a clothesline, and I’d love solar panels but right now they’re too expensive, and the rebate they used to offer has been rescinded. In California for sure, they ought to be part of all new building.
I just love how you write.
August 5th, 2009 at 11:02 am
We city-dwellers aka urbanites who live in high rises and condos have options when it comes to food gathering. There are farmer’s markets and urban gardens where you can get a small patch of land and plant it. As for the clothesline, not sure how to do that except to run it across apartments like in the Bronx in the 1950s. That might be a nice neighborly thing to do…
August 5th, 2009 at 11:40 am
Agree on everything except the cleaning part. Dusting and mopping never helped my waistline. Plus if I did my own cleaning, my mental health and marriage would suffer because I would start re-remembering how little cleaning my husband does; and how much of it I still do even though we hire someone to clean so my mental health doesn’t suffer. It’s the best money I spend–except for the money I spend on yoga, which also contributes mightily to my mental health.
August 5th, 2009 at 7:18 pm
some of the finest people i don’t know live in double wide trailers. and formaldehyde is widely used, as we know, in embalming and not one corpse was ever harmed.
August 5th, 2009 at 11:22 pm
That is brilliant. Love your work.
August 6th, 2009 at 5:26 am
Prudence, you do have a lot to say – and it’s all good! Wonderful article. And I concur, it is always about the money.
August 10th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
A truly inspired, fantastic, hysterical rant that made me laugh until I peed my pants- menopause, ya’ know does wierd things when you laugh so hard.
August 10th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
You’re amazing, and totally-absolutely correct, and I agree with everything you said — especially every point that mentioned children. I would like to see this post made into a poster. Will you be my new best friend?
August 10th, 2009 at 7:36 pm
Cindy, go for it! Make a poster and let me see it! Cool!
Prudence
August 24th, 2009 at 1:55 pm
Prudence, you are my favorite crank, and I so side with you on all of it, every bit. It just makes me miss having you near at hand, to hear your perceptive and witty rants on a more daily basis. I see Tim is holding his own also. Miss you both, and Casey and Ethan. California is much the worse for having lost you.
October 7th, 2009 at 10:29 am
for some reason just seeing this now…duh…love this, darling Pru…yes, yes, yes…have had my clothes line for years, am taking big bites out of my front lawn (back long gone…got about 8 tomato plants and one big ol cantalope vine (w/ 2 melons) as volunteers from the compost soil…how’s that for a bonus?! They also use trailers in schools s ‘bungalows’…bad, bad, bad…i do my own cleaning and gardening but am still getting fat in the middle after a lifetime of skinny…i blame it on menopause but i think it’s cuz i’m lazy…must say, preschool was a gift…expensive but made some lifelong friends…both the kids & i…but i worked off a lot of the tuition so does that count? was there A LOT! women & girls in ALL the world are under constant attack on every front (including America, folks)…it is a travesty and a heartbreak and we must unite in changing that NOW…which includes silencing that evil Ann Coulter…neither woman nor man, fish nor fowl…just foul…what MADE her?? You are a gem…love you madly…