04 February 2010

Is this child abuse?


Is this meant to be some kind of a punishment for misbehaving children?

Instead of threatening to bake them into pies a la Hansel and Gretel, do you threaten your kids with "Behave or I'm going to buy a Jonathan Adler Junior blue zebra carpet!"




I can only imagine how much this stuff costs. Here's an idea, if you're going to spend a lot of money on your kids furniture and accessories, why not buy something with real value instead of just freak value? Am I so wrong?

25 comments:

  1. It's definitely a specific look.

    I think the little lion rug is sweet, though.

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  2. It might have been sweet in about 1973, but back then it would have been a hooked rug made by somebody's mother as a gesture of love. In 2010, it's a cynical cash grab. Maybe my problem is the whole retro '70s thing. That's a decade I remember well enough to know that I don't want to repeat it. It was a horror show. Really.

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  3. I had tri-colored purple shag in my bedroom, beads on the door and blacklight posters on the ceiling; need I say more?

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  4. You are not wrong in hating this stuff..tho' I like the doggie bookends. My eldest daughter's nursery was once our office. Her clothes were housed in an Edwardian secretary and she had one of those old(hand-me-down) fold out tower changing tables. The pictures on the wall were from her grandfather's nursery. No, I wasn't making a statement; I was just too poor and too lazy to 'do up' a nursery! As to the 70s...been there, and prefer to forget it!

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  5. Saxon: Yours sounds like my sister's from back then on her big thing was that everything had to be hot pink. Remember that color? If you ever want to see a real girl's room from that era, watch an old Brady Bunch episode. The room shared by Marcia, Jan and Cindy sums up that decade perfectly.

    Anne: It sounds like you had the same idea about kids' rooms as my parents did. You did it right so far as I'm concerned. Call me crazy, but spending $20,000 furnishing a kids room sets up that kid for a lifetime of expectation and disappointment.

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  6. PS - I have a topic request I'd like your opinion on please. What are your thoughts on induction cooktops / ranges?

    Thanks,
    Sharon

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  7. Sharon: I love induction with a passion that scares me. I've written about it a lot here. Just search my archives for "induction." There are four or five posts dedicated to it, including one that describes my using one at a seminar at GE Monogram's test kitchen in Louisville last summer. I prefer induction to gas strongly. Really.

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  8. Thanks! I'll look at your articles. I am so glad that was your answer!

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  9. My pleasure Sharon, I've been a big proponent of induction for years. So far as I can tell it doesn't have any downsides. Other than you can't use Calphalon with it, but I don' think that's a downside. Hah!

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  10. Timmy looked down at the rug with mixed feelings. He enjoyed hunting with his dad, but when it came time to shoot, he stalled. The blue zebra looked so beautiful, standing there, unaware that its life was soon to come to an end.

    "Shoot, son!" his father hissed.

    "Do I have to, Dad?" Timmy whimpered. "It didn't do anything to us."

    "Look, son," his father whispered, "You want to be a man, right? You want to do all the things the big boys do?"

    "Yes," Timmy breathed. He had watched his older brother go off with his father on many a hunting expedition and return breathless and triumphant.

    His finger tightened on the trigger and he closed his eyes. The sound was deafening.

    His father slapped him on the back. "Good shot, son!" Timmy felt hollow inside.

    The only good thing about the whole experience, he reflected, was that the manager was probably never going to let them back into *that* Toys R Us store again.

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  11. Ohmigod...that is hysterical...Paul..can braveheart be in our book????? LOL....glad to see I am not only snark in bloggerville!

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  12. Wickedly funny: thanks so much for the great laugh, Bravewolf!

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  13. Bravewolf: I am in awe. And Raina: I'm passing along the troth you extended to me the other day to Bravewolf. Saxon and Cheryl: I second everything you said.

    Bravewolf and Nim co-write a blog called Bitchlexia and they need to be encouraged to keep at it. Start reading them, they're hysterical. http://bitchlexia.blogspot.com/

    Additionally, Bravewolf writes one of the most compelling blogs I've ever read. It's called Backwards from Canada and I think of it as the movie Midnight Express only it's told from the perspective of the people left behind. My God, I can't get enough of it. Here's the link: http://bitchlexia.blogspot.com/

    Start at the beginning and work your way forward.

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  14. Here's the thing ~ one or two pieces may actually add something quite nice but having it all together like that in a display is a bit much. When I look at it, I think 'edit well.'
    Paula Grace ~

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  15. I guess, but the thing is, the era this stuff's evoking wasn't really that long ago and there are tons of that stuff still around. If you want to go '70s retro, then go to a thrift store and buy some authentic '70s retro. You'll save a fortune and have something with some integrity. Adler's stuff always seems so cynical to me. It has shock value but it's not really saying anything but "I dare you."

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  16. Those headless giraffe lamps are pretty creepy! I would bet they would give any kid night mares... I know I am afraid to go to sleep now!

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  17. Thank you, thank you :) This is what happens when I get bored at work.

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  18. Michelle: Ugh ugh ugh. But I think I've been pretty clear about that. Hah!

    Bravewolf: Please keep getting bored at work.

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  19. Crap! I just noticed that I used the link to Bitchlexia twice when I was trying to link back to Bravewolf's Backwards from Canada. The correct link is: http://backwardsfromcanada.blogspot.com/

    Everybody book mark that link and then spend a couple of hours on Saturday morning reading it from start to finish.

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  20. Aha! so this is what you all get up to when I'm at home sick as a dog? Apparently I've been missing out while my kitten and I have been curled up on the couch watching 12 hours of CSI a day.

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  21. Rest up, drink lots of fluids and feel better. OK?

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  22. Hey Paul! Catching up on your blog after so much time away. Seventies fashion was pretty hideous, both in decorating and in clothing. We wore some of the thickest, itchiest polyester imaginable. And Wrangler jeans. Then Disco jeans (worse). But the hair? It was great, even if it did give rise to the curly perm.

    Also, apparently you have to be invited to read Backwards from Canada. It won't let me in.

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  23. Welcome back! Isn't interesting that in order to sell polyester to those of us who lived through it the first time, the manufacturer rebranded it as "microfiber?"

    Backwards from Canada got moved completely for security purposes. Bravewolf's mother was worried about someone doing something horrible as a result of what she'd been writing. Ugh.

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  24. Yup! Try http://backwardsfromcanada.wordpress.com

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Talk to me!