The Bad Mommyblogger Purity Test

Greetings and salutations (first one to name the movie, the speaker of that line, and where I actually saw him in person – I’ll send you a mix CD). I'm Julie, and you can usually find me at mothergoosemouse. (Mix CD has been won by Amy Jo!)

It’s an honor to be here, trashing Her Bad Mother’s pristine blog with all of my trashiness. Frankly, I’m intimidated to be kicking off this burlesque show, as I’ve never even been in a wet t-shirt contest, let alone paraded across the stage of the Moulin Rouge wearing nothing but feathers. Consider me the little trick dog that amuses you. Kristen and Liz and Joy will be here with the feathers soon enough.

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I grew up in the Midwest, and when we weren’t out tipping cows, we were busy raising our scores on the Purity Test (thereby lowering our Purity).

The Purity Test consisted of two tattered sheets of paper that had been copied and re-typed and copied again and folded up and shoved into the back pockets of innumerable pairs of jeans as it made its way around our high school several times over. The 100 questions on the test concerned sexual experimentation, drug and alcohol experimentation, and how much trouble you’d gotten into with both of those. Not only was it fun to assess just how far your own innocence had deteriorated, it was also pretty interesting to guess – based on your friends’ scores – in what ways THEIR innocence had deteriorated. That is, which questions they’d answered yes and which ones they’d answered no.

It’s been at least 15 years since I last took the Purity Test, and now that I’m over 21, with a husband and children, many of the questions seem…well, kind of boring.

But a Bad Mommyblogger Purity Test? Well, that’s another story altogether.

The Bad Mommyblogger Purity Test

Check all boxes for which your answer is "yes".
The "submit" button is at the bottom.

1. Do you have a blog?


2. Have you been blogging for more than one year?


3. Have you been blogging for more than five years?


4. Do you contribute to more than two blogs?


5. Do you contribute to more than five blogs?


6. Do you comment on others' blogs?


7. When commenting, have you ever provided a fake name/fake e-mail?


8. When commenting, have you ever flamed the blog owner?


9. When commenting, have you ever flamed another commenter?


10. Do you post unflattering tidbits about your spouse or SO?


11. Do you post unflattering tidbits about your in-laws?


12. Do you post unflattering tidbits about other bloggers?


13. Did you go to BlogHer '05?


14. Did you go to BlogHer '06?


15. Did you go to BlogHer Business '07?


16. Are you going to BlogHer '07?


17. Do you write about poop?


18. Do you write about pubes?


19. Do you shave/wax/otherwise eliminate your pubes?


20. Do you say "fuck" in your posts?


21. Does your spouse or SO read your blog?


22. Do your in-laws read your blog?


23. Do your co-workers read your blog?


24. Do your kids read your blog?


25. Does your ex read your blog?

Leave your score in the comments!

There's Something About WonderBaby

WonderBaby did her own hair today:




As she is wont to do:


This look is achieved through the application of her custom blend of liquid hand soap and drool (var. apple juice and snot). A strange concoction, but effective, and vastly preferable to other forms of hair gel.


Any resemblance between WonderBaby and fictional characters from Farrelly Brothers comedies is purely coincidental.

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I've been a very poor blog citizen (blogizen?) for the past week and half or so, what with illness and all, and I'm afraid that my lackluster participation in the blogosphere will remain such for a few days yet, as WonderBaby and I explore the western colonies. But the show will go on chez HBM - there's going to be a little dirty burlesque action from a crack team of guest performers while WonderBaby and I are gone, and it'll be worth checking out.

And check out MBT - lots of good bloggy action there. And the Basement, too - head over for a visit, or submit a post ('s quiet 'round there) and liven things up a bit.

(EDITED TO ADD: And things did indeed just get livened up in the Basement.)

Lots to do. You'll hardly notice that we're gone.

Heaven Can Wait

I've got nothing against Christians. Heck, I've been one. I might even tell you that I am one - albeit a conflicted one - if you press me in my more emotional/less philosophic moments. And you might even, sometimes, hear me say that I think that Christians get an bad rap in popular discourse, that they are often unfairly characterized as being uniformly evangelical and extremist and narrow-minded and illiberal and collectively ignorant and all sorts of terrible things that good liberals pretty much never say about anyone else anymore.

So, no, I don't want any part of bitch-slapping the faithful just because I've got my own issues about organized religion. But that doesn't mean that I'm going to check my brain at the door when I wander into a klatsche of Christian women talking about who gets to go heaven and am invited to share my thoughts on the issue. Hence the emergence of - what did I call her? - my pissy inner bizatch the other day when I received an e-mail suggesting that I write a post about Ten Reasons Why I Believe That All Moms Go To Heaven.

My immediate reaction? Why, I do think that I shall write a post about Ten Reasons Why All Moms Will NOT Go To Heaven. And, perhaps, too, Ten Reasons Why, If There Is A Special Corner Of Heaven For Mothers, I Do Not Want To Spend Eternity There.

But when I said as much in my last post, I received this comment: "Oh My...such hate for awesome Mom's (sic) who break their back (sic) everyday to do the best they can for their kids."

Let's clear this up right now: I'm not hating on moms, nor on Christian moms, nor on Christians in general or anyone else who insists upon wearing a halo on their ball cap when I say, again, that I am pretty certain that NOT ALL MOTHERS are going to heaven (if there is, in fact, a heaven, which is still something that I am not completely certain of). Because, as I said last day, I can rhyme off a pretty long list of some good ol' evil mothers pretty quickly. And, there's this whole issue that I have about the distinct possibility that I will not be going to heaven (also, where are all the Jewish mothers going? How can I work it so that I can go with them?)

But that's beside the point. Let's imagine, for a moment, that there is a special corner of Heaven for mothers, and that by 'mother' we are (as my anonymous commenter insisted) referring specifically to good women who love their children and not all those other nasty breeders who have given birth but not earned the holy title of Mother for some reason or another. Are you imagining with me? Good.

Now, let's see: Ten Reasons Why I Do Not Want To Spend Eternity In Mother-Heaven:

1) There's probably no liquor.

2) And probably no half-naked dancing boys, either.

3) I really don't look good in a halo, the lovely sparkly bits notwithstanding.

4) Also, those wings look heavy, and I have back problems.

5) I can't sing, and I'm guessing that there's a choir.

6) Is it really just going to be mothers? Is George Clooney a mother? No? Then, no.

7) Have I mentioned about my suspicion that there will be no liquor?

8) Or my suspicion that if there is liquor, it will just be wine coolers?

9) It's just not a party if Medea and Sylvia Plath and the Borgia women and Anna Nicole and all the other evil or fallen or impious or otherwise bad mothers of history aren't there, and I'm geussing that they're not going (even if good ol' Sylvia made her kids some sandwiches before sticking her head in that oven, I'm pretty sure that 'preparing lunch' doesn't make up for 'killing self and leaving children to be raised by Ted Hughes and his lovers' in the Christian sin calculus.)

And Reason Number 10 Why I Do Not Want To Go To Mother Heaven: because heaven, my friends, is a place on earth:

It's a baby in a sugar bush, dancing to George and Alice Potter's Old Tyme Jug Band...

... while clutching a wee creamer.

I've got my own Heaven, thankyouverymuch, and even if it is a bit hellish at times, I'll take an Eternal Return to this place over Mommy Paradise, any day.

(Oooh, baby, do you know what that's worth?!)

Blogstipation Is A Bitch (And So Am I)

One of the problems with taking a break from blogging is that the stream of stuff that one wants to write/blog about doesn't stop running. It just keeps coming and coming and that list in your head of things that you really must write about just gets longer and longer and eventually you start to get something like that cramped feeling that you get when your gastro-intestinal system gets all bunged up from too much input and not enough output, except in your head and not in your pipes.

That's what's happening to me right now. There are about six gajillion ideas for posts that pressing upon the inside of my skull, but I am exhausted and suffering from health-related anxiety and general malaise and am overwhelmed with work and feeling guilty about not socializing enough in my beloved momosphere and simply can't push those posts through my system quickly enough.

I am currently aching from the stoppage that is this collection of backed-up posts:

1) The now long overdue recap of the intellectual and social excitement that was my sojourn with my much loved BlogRhet pals in Kentucky. Adventure, excitement, and hordes of Mary Kay ladies crossing paths with clutches of competitive bow-archers. Pink feather boas get tangled up in crossbows; hilarity ensues. Why have I not written about this yet?

When transporting arrows in one's stroller, one must always be certain to keep sharp steel tips pointed downward, so as not to pierce one's self while steering or manipulating sippy cup. Also, purple sippy cups and green strollers pair best with red arrowheads (purple or green arrowheads would be too matchy matchy).

2) A serious reflection on some of the ideas that we generated during the intellectual bacchanal that was that sojourn in Kentucky, not least a consideration of what counts as authenticity in the momosphere, and whether and to what extent authenticity matters. How is it that such intimacies are forged in the virtual spaces of our storytelling, of our performances as writers/mothers, when such spaces seem to preclude 'real' authenticity? And, what is real authenticity, anyway? Who is the real Her Bad Mother, and why do you or should you even care?

Does Her Bad Mother really have a gigantic distorted head? Is Joy really a squat leprechaun? Does Bub really have a forehead that extends to infinity? Can we ever really know what's real? CAN WE?

3) Why Teletubbies is a work of breathtaking postmodernist genius.

4) Why I don't want to be a MILF. Or a Yummy Mummy. Or anything that involves me worrying about those last inches of tubbiness around my hips or whether I've still 'got it.' Because, for the record, I don't. And I don't care. And I like that I don't care. But also I'm worried about not caring. You see where this could get confusing.

5) Why kid-haters should just shut the fack up already and admit that really, deep down, they're just sad and lonely and terrified of their own mortality. Tentative title: Pedophobes Are The New Racists, So Let's Shame Them Already.

6) Why all moms will NOT go to heaven. Or, rather, why, if there such a thing as mom-heaven, I don't want to go there.

This last one is just me being contrary. Apparently, if you write a post about ten reasons why all moms go to heaven, you could win fifty bucks worth of t-shirts and hats and whatnots and there's a good cause behind this and all, but please. How could this not provoke my pissy inner bizatch? I could give you a list of ten mothers who did NOT go to mom-heaven (Caterina Sforza, to save her own life, handed her kids over to the men who murdered her husband and then flashed them her hoo-hah, hollering that they could just go ahead and kill those kids, 'cuz she could make MORE. People: this mother did not go to any heaven that I've ever heard of), and that would just be from the files of Bad Renaissance Mothers Whose First Names Start With C.

Then, too, there're the Ten Reasons Why It Is Theologically Unsound To Insist That Everyone With A Used Uterus Goes To Heaven. And, also, the Ten Reasons Why Claiming An Association Between The Fate Of Human Souls And Reproductive Practices Is Also Probably Philosophically Untenable And Very Possibly Illiberal, Too.

In any case, even if we amended the original statement to read Ten Reasons Why We'd Like To Think That Motherhood Qualifies Us For Entrance Into Heaven NotWithStanding The Teachings Of Most Theistic Religions And Major Philosophical Traditions, I'd still have to demur treatment of that statement, and offer this instead: Ten Reasons Why, If There Is A Special Corner Of Heaven For Mothers, I Do Not Want To Spend Eternity There.

But that'll have to wait until tomorrow, or the next day. I'm blogstipated, you know.

Edited to add: My buddy Julie of Mothergoosemouse is also not going to heaven, and she's telling you why. And, all these juicy blog-post ideas and I went and wrote a book review. On a book about sleep. Go figure.