Ulysses: One's walking around a city and the like.

There has been a mild donnybrook over a cranky review of the entertaining and deservedly ubiquitous mimi smartypants (see 2004-05-27) from a guy who wrote

I would certainly characterize her material at this point as self-absorbed. I would think that to grow and improve as an artist, one would need to get beyond talking about one's daughter's bowel movements, one's last toke, one's last public reading, and the like. My concern is that I'm not seeing this, and one reason I'm not is that there's no way to provide feedback -- either info on writing that's being done that might match her interests, or even stuff she might improve on her own blog.

Ms. Pants launches her own eloquent defense, though I must confess that I have my doubts about the critical acuity of any sentence that begins "I would think that," and winds along to the conclusion "and the like." Between these two phrases one could imagine an early Victorian vicar in Kent inserting the body of his letter to the Naval Board expressing his irritation that they had not seen fit to adopt his plan for the construction of battleships along Biblical lines.

But the peripheral issue here that grabbed me was his characterization of her writing about her daughter as "talking about one's daughter's bowel movements," when in fact her ongoing account is some of the least coprocentric parental writing on the Web. My suspicion (though I am not sufficiently empirical to prove this) is that this fling about diapers and what goes into them has become the throw-away characterization you hear from people who wish to dismiss parental writing on non-wonky parenting issues.

Anyway, there is great material to be extracted (gingerly) from the bowels of our children. Two who deserve reading (at all times, not just when their households have been stricken) (as each is now) are One Good Thing and Finslippy.

Comments

[flea]

Thanks, G.!

I read that pompous critique of Miss Pants, and the first thing I thought was "If he thinks *she* writes about baby poo too often, he's obviously never read *mine*.

I'd also like to point out that if any sans-child bloggers suddenly found themselves covered in human shit one day, they'd damn well write about it.

[nyarlathotep]

I just wanted to thank you for using the word "donnybrook."

[G.]

I was up in the air over "donnybrook" vs. "brouhaha." Glad to get some confirmation.

Yeah, you spend enough time staring at the working end of a colon and you have to say SOMETHING about it, for crying out loud. Especially when it's out to get you.

[nyarlathotep]

You know you're not a parent when you read that last comment as being about punctuation the first time through...

[Melissa]

Hahaha...you are all cracking me up :)

And I just have to say...if one can't be self-absorbed in a journal, then where?

[Super Turtle Girl]

I become outraged when my parents write about my poop because damnit that's MY material. Can't they write about their own %#@^&#$ childhoods?

I kinda feel sorry for that guy cause Mimi S. writes rings around him and he went to some kind of grad school for that kind of thing and she still kicks him sideways 'til Tuesday. That must hurt.