Friday, July 22, 2005

July 22, 2005


July 22, 2005

  • Ha!  I discovered some info that makes the idea of breastfeeding a
    little more tolerable. No one told me that legally, a woman cannot be
    arrested or harassed for indecent exposure while she’s breastfeeding.
      This made my day.  Heck, I think I’ll breast feed just for
    that, so  I can flash whomever I want, wherever I
    want.   Also, knowing that Josh possesses such strong maternal
    instincts, is very comforting.  Maybe he’ll even come out here,
    slap on one of those rubber breast things they make for gay dads and
    join in the fun.  ( I can always hope).   Lastly, I
    discovered (via google) a rather hilarious mathematical formula for
    determining whether a restaurant is suitable for nursing.  Of
    course I discovered the formula before I learned that I can expose my
    breasts in whatever way I see fit as long as there’s an infant attached
    to it.   No matter, I still might apply the principle on days when
    I’m not feeling particularly rebellious.
      It is copy and pasted as follows:

    (C + A)(V + S)
    (M-Q)
    C = The cost in US dollars of steak frites at the restaurant
    Are we talking about the Olive Garden or Da Silvano? French Laundry or
    Orange Julius? ‘ The principle here is that a restaurant where steak frites
    costs zero dollars (because it has none) is probably not appropriate
    for breastfeeding, though a restaurant charging more than 30 dollars is
    also inappropriate. (It is acceptable, barely, if the dish is not
    identified by its French name.)
    A = The child’s age in months
    The age of the person-thing being breastfed is a concern. Obviously, a
    six-month-old infant may have a more pressing feeding need than an
    18-monther. Here we enter the tricky, judicially-inspired terminology
    of ‘community standards’ – in some communities, a fetus is a person,
    and may require a good suckle. Of course, much like breastfeeding a
    fetus would be grotesque, even more so might be the public suckling of
    a teenager. Age matters.
    V = A ‘hot-or-not’ rating of the breast’s voluptuousness
    Exposed in a room of businessmen clutching starched napkins, a proud
    breast the pale shade of Tilda Swinton’s arms can stop all discussion.
    Men have an untoward devotion to breasts, those quirky Darwinian
    phantasms. How they became so sexualized is a question best left to
    rabid teen feminists; to what extent they are appealing to the ‘average
    man’ is much more important. (We will ban lactation fetishists from our
    sample.) Rate your breast on this scale: 10 points for grotesque or
    surgically-altered in unpleasant fashion; 20 points for ‘eh’ breast, or
    a breast otherwise unappealing due to Debra Messing-esque smallness, or
    other real or imagined semi-deformity; 30 points for happy fun bosoms.
    S = The amount of slurping the child makes during feeding
    Public breastfeeding should be nearly silent. While a diner is happily
    encountering, say, the Savoy’s fantastic octopus appetizer, the
    soundtrack of an encephalopod-like milk-frenzy is not necessarily a
    super addition. Please rate your baby’s teat-adherence similarly to the
    voluptuousness scale: 10 points for ultra-squelchy piggishly loud
    Veruca Salt-type babies; 20 points for ‘some sucking noise’; 30 for
    babies who feed as if they were posing in stained glass with the Virgin
    Mary.
    M = The presence of men between the ages of 15 and 32
    Many think a man becomes more tolerant as he ages. Close – but really,
    as a man ages, he simply becomes more complacent. He cares less, and he
    cares less to rouse himself about what he might actually still care
    about; the old boarhogs of the world are degraded by long association
    with their own kind. In the testosterone years from mid-teen to
    early-30s, however, a man will butt his head against anything simply
    because his horns itch. The greater the number of such men present, the
    more likely you will hear comments about ‘bringing those funbags over
    here, baby.’
    Q = The number of obviously gay waiters
    The presence of a herd (in anthropological parlance, a ‘clutch’) of gay
    waiters means that you, clearly, are in a gay restaurant, and no one
    gives a damn if you breastfeed. Sure they’ll roll their eyes, but yell
    out, ‘Take a picture, ladies,’ and the gays will cackle and go back to
    ‘dishing the dirt,’ as their people say. A complete absence of gay
    waiters, however, means you are in a stuffy sort of place (perhaps the
    Friars Club?), and should proceed with caution. (Or, you’re at a
    lesbian separatist potluck commune meeting place, perhaps, in which
    case we imagine you have bigger issues to worry about.) The number of
    obviously gay waiters will be subtracted from the number of straight
    male diners.
    Again, our formula:

    (C + A)(V + S)
    (M-Q)
    Answer Key
    TOTAL = Any Negative Number: You’re good to go! Feed away!
    TOTAL = Greater than 1 but less than 30:
    Yo lady! Spare us your unsightly milktubes!
    TOTAL = Greater than 30: Go on, sister woman sister! Rock those puppies out!

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