My attentive readers will already know how incensed I am by this smug local eco-couple, Sarah McGaughey and Kyle Glover. Imagine my blood-pressure reading when I discovered this morning they've actually decided to reproduce.
Of course, there was much angst over the buying of the pregnancy test and how could she possibly buy ginger ale that comes in bottle with a non-recyclable cap. (Or something. I cannot quote it because little pieces of my brain are currently adhering to my monitor.)
Motherfucker. I laughed out loud. Because I hate to break it to them, but babies come with stuff. Poop and stuff, stuff and poop, stuff on poop, that's pretty much it for the first year. You don't buy it most of it. It just arrives, and surrounds your 9lb wonder like a miasma.
Sarcasm aside -- I do fear for these two gopher-cute beardies with their child. Because I've known a fair number who have had their little theories All Worked Out before the birth -- cloth diapers, family bed, homemade baby food, no plastic toys, no Disney shit -- and they've had a hard landing when the kid is actually a real live thing who is screaming at them GET ME AN ELMO I CANNOT STAND THE SIGHT OF THIS MONTESSORI CRAP AND I AM GOING TO PRY OUT MY EYES WITH THIS PIAGET STICK. There's nothing harder than having to give up your sleep and your principles in the same month.
Meaning, when Sarah and Kyle's little dude is cutting his first teeth and has been behaving like a total asshole for two days, but then miraculously turns normal again 20 minutes after his first dose of Advil (which only comes in teeny tiny non-recyclable bottles, surrounded by liability insurance and cardboard and plastic), I can absolutely promise you they won't be thinking, "this is wrong." They will be thinking, "where can I get more of this?" and "that 'no more than 4 doses a day' shit is just ass-covering nonsense, right?"
Wishing your baby health and happiness, Kyle and Sarah. And that pack of disposibles that's going to turn up on the porch in a year? You can thank me later.
7 comments:
This turns out to be one of the dynamics of a 21st-century marriage: repurposing your husband's breakfast-table harrumphing as a blog post. Then again, my harrumphing was repurposing your harrumphing, so maybe it's just an efficient circle.
Anyway: there's an element to McGaughey's environmentalism which makes more sense as ritual than actual conviction. Case in point is her pregnancy test: instead of peeing on a stick like everybody else, she went to her MD's office and had a blood test, creating sharps which have to be disposed of as medical waste, and goodness knows what use of one-use products in the lab where they analyzed her sample.
But she didn't have to throw anything away, except the Band-Aid, which she blogged about. That was OK, sort of, in a Sundays-in-Lent sort of way, because she'd created an exception for medical waste. Except that a peed-on pregnancy test doesn't count as medical waste, apparently.
I was about to say -- in what earthy way does a lab test produce less waste than a peestick? I'm a bit of a lab-test aficionado at this point, and they use at minimum:
- one reusable plastic sleeve
- one non-reusable needle (medical waste)
- one non-reusable vacuum collection tube for the blood (also medical waste)
- two non-reusable cotton balls
- one non-reusable band-aid
and that's BEFORE it even gets to the lab. All that vs. one recycleable cardboard box and one bit of plastic (and pee). They haven't quite absorbed the concept of internalizing the externalities, clearly.
They remind me of those freaky freaks in, where was it, Toronto Life? a year or two ago, who weren't going to alter their funky-hip loft, with lots of sharp corners and open overhangs and fragile Art, when their baby arrived. I laughed and laughed, and was sorry there was never a follow-up story.
I've been trying to stay quiet here, but I feel like I need to defend myself. The saynototrash piece was more performance art and extremism than environmentalism, so yes there were some elements that didn't make much sense as environmental activism. No, the blood test doesn't make any less garbage than a pee test, but my beardie-wierdie pee render those tests useless and inaccurate, so I needed to do a blood test.
I keep thinking there must be something more satisfying you can do with your time than tear apart other people's efforts, but then again maybe there isn't. I'm glad I could be of inspiration to you, either way.
If you are interested, there are lots of less extreme ways you can make a proactive change in this world, that don't involve turning into a "side show freak". Thanks for that, by the way. I haven't been called a freak in years-it was very exciting! Both www.worldchanging.com and www.idealbite.com have great tips and resources for mainstream folk. Good luck and take care, from your very own beardie-weirdie, side show freak, crunchy granola earth mama, Sarah McGaughey
Wow. You're sure riled up about this...and I'm a little confused as to why. Sarah and Kyle are doing their own thing (a thing that long predates the Globe and Mail articles) and for some reason, they really get on your nerves.
They're not preachy or judgemental people. Their personal ethics are admittedly pretty hardcore, but not without boundaries or limits (if you read the latest blog, after the month long life-art performance project was over, Sarah went out and bought *gasp* things in packages!) and more importantly, their ethics are their own: they don't force their opinions on others. I think that what they're doing is pretty damn commendable, and I admire their conviction. That doesn't mean that I'm going to save my bath water to flush the toilet or stress about the non-biodegradable dental floss that I use, and that's ok. Everyone-Sarah and Kyle, you, me-we're all full well and able to make their own decisions regarding ecological responsibility and lifestyle. Their decisions are their business.
It's your blog, and if you want to use it as a sounding board, then fine. But going on a rant about male pantyhose or whatever is one thing, and making personal attacks on people that you don't know is quite another. It's, well, pretty damn mean.
Hi Sarah
Thanks for dropping by -- I wish you a healthy pregnancy and delivery. Having a child is a wonderful, enriching experience.
But let me tell you, you do have to develop a thick skin, because everyone from your Aunt Marlene to strangers on the street are going to tell you the best way to be a parent. So butch up. You've had the Globe and Mail and countless other strangers on your blog oozing over you with congratulations of you special, specialness -- but you can't take one internet blogger telling you that you're out to lunch? You're going to get your feelings hurt every 5 minutes as a parent, I promise you.
Now, explain exactly why your pee makes over-the-counter pregnancy tests inaccurate. It's not that I don't believe you, but I want to believe that Dale Duncan wasn't being a shitty reporter when she failed to mention that in her article. Or could it be that you omitted to mention that to her, to better wallow in what was a apparently a meaningless non-choice to buy a pregnancy test? If so, I call bullshit on that.
And as for your sidekick Blair -- yes, it is my blog! Thanks for pointing that out. When you say "their decisions are their business," that would be entirely accurate IF they hadn't made the choice to put themselves in the public eye by being 1. creating a blog and 2. becoming the subject of articles in the Globe and Mail (and elsewhere).
What you're really saying is "their decisions can be approved of but not criticized" which is utterly bogus.
It's a bit like you calling me "damn mean." If you'd just walked up to me on the street without knowing who I was or what I stood for and said it, I'd think you were an asshole. But on this board, it's fair ball. Well, I still think you're probably an asshole, but one entirely within his rights to witter on about meeeeaness.
OK, sorry to serial post but I just caught up on my weekend Globe reading and saw the very timely article about Kyle and Sarah responding to criticism by deciding to air-dry their bags under human power rather than using an electric fan.
While I'm glad this duo is adaptable, I'm beginning to think that Dale Duncan is giving them a soft ride. There are far deeper criticisms of their plan to make (I'd start with the Jesuitical pregnancy test, for one); is this the only criticism we can expect to hear? If so, time to take Dale and her soft soap off the case.
Not to prattle, but there is a significant difference between critiquing the project--pointing out inconsistencies like the pee-stick controversy, or the inefficient bag-drying system, or larger problems with the project proper--like your valid criticism that the project, in its extremism, may be causing more harm than good for their cause, by implying that living an ecologically responsible lifestyle is a lot of hard work and makes every decison into a huge moral dilemma. Perhaps their project is bad art, or bad politics, or bad activism. Perhaps it's been subject to bad, uncritical journalism. The successes and failings of the project are debatable, particularly since it's been getting a substantial bit of coverage by the mainstream media.
But calling people, strangers, "fucking sideshow freaks" and "beardie-weirdies" is not only mean, it's also bad rhetoric.
My two cents.
Blair
Post a Comment