by Lisa Brady

Thanks to a new wave of reality TV shows like MTV’s Teen Mom and 16 and Pregnant, and ABC Family’s The Secret Life of the American Teenager, the issue of teen pregnancy is out in the open (and apparently a source of endless entertainment). But does anyone else find it incredibly ironic that ABC Family is showing a series about teen pregnancy?

In the past it was considered a grievous mistake to get pregnant before getting married. These days, with the 50% divorce rate and the prevalence of one-night stands (and unprotected copulation), it’s very common to have a single parent situation. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. If Gilmore Girls has taught us anything, its that single mom’s (or dad’s) rock – and can be super hot. And with the likes US Weekly and People rewarding teenage moms with magazine covers, it’s almost as if the mainstream media is actively encouraging the phenomenon.

On the other side of the spectrum, there are married, middle-aged women who can’t conceive for anything. In the introduction to Idiocracy, a hilarious film that takes the dumbing down of our society to the nth degree, they explain how things got that way. The sequence shows how uneducated hillbillies are be able to reproduce like rabbits while married Mensa couples fail to conceive no matter how hard they try. Sadly this rings a little too true, and is an interesting observation, when you think about how entertainment has grabbed onto the idea of teen pregnancy.



It must be incredibly frustrating to be a woman who waited until later in life to be a mom, only to find out she can’t have kids, and then to watch a TV show like Teen Mom where young girls are doing the most ridiculous shit, like leaving their children unattended, or not being able to form a complete and coherent sentence. If I was trying to conceive and couldn’t, watching something like that would make me want to put my foot through the television.

I recently did some research into the world of fertility and conception, and let me tell you, there are some major hoops to jump through. In addition to the basic counting of days to find out when you’re ovulating, there are calendars that mark the days you’re most likely to conceive one sex or the other, certain positions that are more likely to result in pregnancy, and pages and pages of women talking in a completely different language (ttc, bd, af* – you better learn these before you try and read anything on a parenting website).

When you get down to science of it, getting pregnant is quite difficult. There are only a few days out of the entire month that you’re likely to conceive. But if it’s so damn hard, how are all these teenagers getting pregnant so easily? My mother’s answer: “Because they screw like rabbits.” Not exactly scientific, but basically her sentiment is correct. Younger women are simply more fertile, and the more you tempt fate, the more likely you are to get bitch slapped by it.

Pregnancy, once considered a taboo subject unless you were of a certain age and married, has done a 180. We’ve left behind the twin-set and pearls, idealistic 50’s bullshit. Personally, I think if a woman or a man wants to raise a child by themselves, and are competent and capable, then why the hell not? I also think it’s ridiculous that there are so many examples of crappy parenting out there and it doesn’t seem to stem the flow of terrible choices. Oh well, kids will be kids and teenagers have been having un-married sex for centuries probably. Now we just get to watch it in prime time – and read about it in our “celebrity” magazines.

*ttc = trying to conceive bd = baby dance (my fave) af = aunt flow

by Lisa Brady

It’s been quite some time since The Cleavers came to us once a week to share their life lessons and morals. Over 50 years, in fact. A lot has changed since 1957. Segregation was ended, women are prevalent (and kicking ass) in the workplace and the typical family ideal seems to have fallen by the wayside. Some would argue the merits of moving past the stuffy, goody-two-shoes, so-sweet-it-makes-your-teeth-hurt family moment, but I have to ask: is it really so terrible?

Sure, Wally and The Beav got into “trouble” on a regular basis and by the end of 30 minutes, they were sitting down to a home cooked meal and chuckling about the days’ hijinks. That’s not reality, is it? Though it seems unlikely that this was happening in the average white-picket-fence-2.5-kids household, there are some elements to it that aren’t all that bad.



[Jules in Measure Up]

- Family dinner: nowadays it seems like the concept of family dinner mostly takes place in front of the television while the kids are holed up in their rooms, on the internet or texting about the latest gossip (scrunchies are SOOO in right now! {that is COMPLETELY false – put down the scruchy!}) or is minus a parent who is working late. Either way it seems rare these days that a family, with all it’s members, sits down at a table and spends time together. I am the first to admit that kids need their space and shouldn’t be smothered, but sitting down to a meal together hardly qualifies. Get TiVo.

- Sharing conversations: with all of the commercials you see today about how important it is for parents to talk to their kids (drugs, sex, cigarettes, looking at porn) you would think that there would be rampant communicating going on. When I was young my mom had all the talks with me (see above – minus the porn talk) and though I may not have always listened to her (kids will be kids) I know that she cared enough to want to protect me. I will try and do the same if I have kids someday. Especially the cautionary tale about scruchies. Yuck.

- Cause and effect: the working concept for Leave it to Beaver was that the kids would get into some sort of (completely benign) trouble, like skipping school or fibbing to the teach, but at the end they always got caught and were always held responsible for their actions. I think this element of parenting is grossly overlooked these days. Based on what I see in the grocery stores, a lot of kids are allowed to do whatever they want or say whatever they want without fear of ramifications. I stole a mood ring once and when my parents found out they made me go to the store and tell the clerk and then I was grounded for an extended period of time. I can tell you I never shoplifted again. Now I realize this isn’t going to work for every kid, but that doesn’t mean parents shouldn’t try at all. It’s a life lesson that you need to be accountable for your actions and that was something Ward and June were teaching their kids on a weekly basis.

Times, they are a changin’. That’s just reality. It can’t be the same world today that it was in 1957, nor do I think it should be. But progress at the sacrifice of what once was considered the family unit isn’t necessarily progress. So, the next time you are sitting down for dinner in the family room instead of the dining room, or your letting you child kick and scream in the middle of the cereal aisle, think about the Cleavers; what would America’s favorite idealized family do?

We’re all busy. We all have things to do. In an age when we value efficiency to such a high degree, we are all looking for ways to multitask and corners to cut. Fast food, TV dinners, drive thrus, meals on the go, snack bars, Hungry? Why wait?: it seems that one facet of life that is commonly streamlined is the meal.

Of course, we know that such routes to alimentary fulfillment are not optimal for our health. Fewer nutrients, more trans fat, high caloric content, and that nasty postprandial bloating. But, apparently, there's more!

The Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine report a study showing that teenage girls benefit from sitting down to eat meals with their families. This idea goes beyond, though includes, the idea of direct nutrition to encompass a psychological element as well.

The study is a longitudinal evaluation. In 1999, 2500 girls between the ages of 13 and 17 were polled regarding their eating habits. Follow-up investigation has found that the girls who eat with their families at least five times a week have much healthier relationships with food.

Of course, this is a correlational research study, so we are not able to disentangle the various potential causes from one another. But at the same time, this study hints at the idea that family meals help to encourage young girls to form healthier connections with eating. In fact, these results were found to be independent of factors including family relationship, socio-economic status, and weight. Such studies can never provide concrete evidence of causal mechanisms, but some researchers have hypotheses regarding these results.

A little speculative, perhaps, but interesting nonetheless.

And boys? Well…it appears family meals had no such effects on the male population.

And just in case you’re wondering, Fatality eats. And eats a lot. Though her family right now consists of two dogs.

Did I tell you I got a MySpace page? Well I do. I resisted it for a long time. But it’s actually kind of fun.

Anyway, here’s a question I got from one of the people who reads my stuff there:

What do you do when you treat others in a caring, giving, compassionate way...always thinking of others, But it is never appreciated and you are treated really shitty?

Compassion is a big buzzword among Buddhists in America. Everybody’s all like, “Compassion, compassion, compassion….” It’s so fucking annoying I just want to slap them. Be compassionate to me and shut the fuck up about compassion, why don’t you? Why doesn’t anybody ask me about fun stuff like that mummified dinosaur they just found? I shoulda become a paleontologist like I wanted to when I was six instead of a fucking Buddhist monk.

Sorry. Where was I? Oh. Compassion. OK. Compassion is funny stuff. It’s very important to be compassionate. But at the same time you can’t try to be compassionate. Cuz when you try to be compassionate you just screw everything up. Real compassion doesn’t have anything at all to do with your attempts to be compassionate.

Dogen said that compassion is like a hand reaching back to adjust a pillow in the night. That is an example of perfectly selfless and compassionate action. A problem arises and you fix it without ever even being aware of having done anything at all. It doesn’t matter that the person who performs the action and the person who receives its benefit are the same.

The problem for my MySpace friend was that she was trying real hard to be compassionate and that she expected some kind of reward as a result. It’s not necessary to worry too much about the results of what you do. And don't worry too much about deliberately trying to be caring, giving and compassionate. Sometimes when you try too hard at that, you end up doing more than what's actually necessary. Sometimes it's OK to let people suffer a bit. Sometimes it's what they need to go thru and if you interfere with that you're not really helping.

When you see someone suffering it’s sometimes really hard to accept that the best thing to do is nothing at all. Of course I’m not talking here about a situation like if you’re driving through the desert and you come across a Volkswagen bug on its back on fire with twelve screaming orphans inside. You don’t just drive by that and go, “I guess they need to suffer.”

The problem is when you react to every problem you come across the way you’d react to seeing twelve screaming orphans in a burning VW bug. You feel like, “Oh my God! I need to go fix that NOW!” And you end up just being an interfering busybody and making everybody resent you for it.

I see people who are into Buddhism getting into this kind of stuff all the time. They hear that the Bodhisattva vow says, “Beings are numberless, I vow to save them all.” And they think they gotta run around pretending to be Wonder Woman or something just saving everybody from everything. It doesn’t work like that. Wonder Woman is a cartoon character. You aren’t.

So how do you know when what you’re feeling is real compassion and when it’s just the desire to meddle in things that don’t need your meddling in them? The only way is to cultivate the same state of mind you have when you’re reaching back to adjust a pillow in the night. You have to be very, very quiet and listen to your intuition.

Real compassion is never emotional. It’s not the kind of messy, fuzzy wuzzy feeling like you get from watching this video:



God that kitty cat is so fucking cute and precious I wanna go to Japan and just crush the life out of him with my bare hands!!!

Sorry. Where was I again?

Oh yeah. True compassion is never that heated feeling of “I gotta fix that!” It’s very spontaneous and clear. Sometimes it’s not what you think of as being nice either. Sometimes real compassionate action looks like just the opposite.

This time of year we’re all spending way too much time with our families. Often the most difficult relationships we have are the ones that are closest. It’s sometimes nigh on impossible to know how to be truly compassionate towards your no-good alcoholic dad or your conniving manipulative mom or your slutty sister or your bonehead brother. We all get into these family get-together situations and think we’re the only sane person in the room. It’s sobering to remember that every single person there is thinking the same thing about him or herself too.

With families the problems are compounded because everyone seems to be needing, expecting, even demanding that you act in whatever way they expect a compassionate and caring person to act. This is especially true if they know you’re a Buddhist and they’ve seen Richard Gere or Lisa Simpson or somebody say something about Buddhism on TV once and figure they therefore know all there is to know about how Buddhists are supposed to behave. But most times they’re dead wrong. Most people don’t have the slightest clue what real compassion is.

The best thing to do is to act carefully without too much haste or urgency and without any expectation of reward or even recognition. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me intellectually, but I’ve noticed that the Universe has a way of working things out. Even if your mom is too bombed on prescription painkillers to notice all the things you did to keep her house from going to hell the week you were there, someone, somewhere, someday will notice and things will balance themselves. It takes a bit of faith to be able to let go and fall backwards into this. But if you do it just seems to work out. It’s useless to speculate why.

Real compassion isn’t about trying to be compassionate. Real caring isn’t about attempting to measure up to some phony image of what a caring person is supposed to look like. Real giving isn’t about handing over everything you have just so everyone knows how giving you can be. Just be very, very quiet and see what needs doing then do it and be finished with it.

And the next time you see me, don’t ask me about compassion. Ask me about the new KISS DVD instead. That’s true compassion.

Brad Warner is the author of Hardcore Zen and Sit Down and Shut Up!. He maintains a blog about Buddhist stuff. If you're in Southern California and you want to try some Zazen for yourself, he has a group that meets every Saturday in Santa Monica.

With all the sexy, fun play S+M offers, it comes as no surprise that everyone wants in on it.

Including Christians.

Of course, letting themselves indulge in the pleasure of giving and receiving pain must be some sort of sin. Thank god for the interweb.

And the Lord said 'Lay the Smack Down!'

Welcome to Christian Domestic Discipline, or CDD. All the fun and smut of playful spanking, but with God looking over your shoulder, reminding you that it’s alright. The Bible says so.

Rarely? That’s odd, especially when you look into the blogs of the women on the site, or even the glossary. Certain terms like Maintenance Journal, which is a record kept over a set length of time that is presented to a husband prior to a scheduled spanking. Some women use the impending punishment as a way to keep the house clean, or keep up to date on raising the children. Hell, it’s even useful for staying true to a diet.

It’s all just a little fun, right? Just some S+M play so loosely veiled as the One True Word that there’s no harm? The site even goes so far as to give you help with introducing CDD into your marriage, making sure to stay as far away from S+M as it can.

Hmm, seems hard to swallow the lie when the front of the page assures you that getting pleasure out of the act is natural and probably just God’s plan. The glossary remains ever helpful and even gives you some starting positions and tips!

Anyone else hot too?

So what’s the big deal? Even with terms like “AAAC: Acronym for Avoid At All Costs. A spanking designed to be particularly severe” or “Pre-emptive Spanking: A spanking given before an event or occasion where a wife has, in the past, had a difficult time with her behavior in the hopes the reminder will help her to behave, sparing her a more severe punishment spanking”, it’s all ‘consensual’ fun. Except the glossary falls to give one definition. Safe Word.

S+M is sexual play, something that goes only as far as the receiver will allow, and stops the minute it is not wanted anymore. CDD is just dominance. Period. If this is play, the game doesn’t stop outside the bedroom. It forces the wife into a submissive role, so much that she lives in constant worry of her next spanking. Sounds a little like walking on eggshells in an abusive relationship, not knowing when you’ve ‘failed’ your maintenance report and your husband will ‘punish you.’

But the site stays adamant that CDD is in no way abuse. The punishment given with CDD is given out of love, while Domestic Abuse is given out of hate. It’s hard to tell where to draw the line, especially when religion calls no comebacks on their beliefs, as if legality cannot touch them.

All I hope is that, when the wife is over her husband’s knee, who of course, gets no pleasure out of hurting her, that she can stop the act the moment it leaves her comfort zone.

But I guess that’s against the point of a punishment.

The vigilant folks behind those family-friendly versions of movies may want to reach for the Purell - their legal battle against the Directors Guild may get dirtier.

A Colorado judge has ruled that the cleaned up movies violate federal copyright laws, and he has ordered several companies to stop selling the films.

One such company, CleanFlicks, promises concerned parents that they have removed all soul-destroying movie moments, including: non-religious references to God (called the G-word), excessive blood and gore, sexual connotation, and visual content of a graphic or stimulating nature. So their version of "Dawn of the Dead" is, what, 15 minutes long?

The judge's ruling also requires Utah-based CleanFlicks and several other companies to turn over all existing copies of edited flicks such as "Wedding Crashers" and "Tommy Boy" to movie studios within five days.

A lawyer for CleanFlicks has said the company will appeal the ruling.


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