“She’s been known, like Helen of Troy, to cause trouble.”
 — That’s NBA star Tony Parker’s lawyer, David Jaroslawicz, saying that ridiculous thing about Rihanna as he filed a $20 million lawsuit against Manhattan Club W.I.P. for letting Drake and Chris Brown inside at the same time, when, Jaroslawicz says, had the owners been reading Bossip like they should have been, they would have known that Drake and Brown are rivals for the affection of Rihanna, so that there was a strong chance that a brawl would erupt when Chris Brown sent Drake’s table a bottle of champagne that was actually filled with Greek soldiers. Parker got a piece of broken glass in his eye during the fight last week. Maybe Rihanna should cover Sinead O’Conner’s “Troy?” Actually, I wouldn’t recommend it. Have you seen O’Conner perform that song live, It’s CRAZY AWESOME! No way Rihanna could hang.

“Brooklyn has long been a home to writers.”
 — AND THAT’S WHEN I CLOSED ALL THE TABS ON ALL THE INTERNET BROWSERS.

It’s Friday, and still so hot that all I want to do for the rest of the day is drink seltzer water and watch this new Beirut video over and over and over again. It’s directed by Houmam Abdallah and Beirut’s Zach Condon says it has “brought the song somewhere that I had only been able to describe to myself, now available for others to see and feel it much more as I had in the process of writing it.” That’s about the nicest thing a musical artist could say about a video for one of his songs, isn’t it? But I wonder whether they had to fill that sailboat with, like, 500 pounds of dead killies to get those seagulls to flock around it for the shoot. That must have stunk. Seagulls are obviously still thriving due to global warming.

Drinking While Pregnant

by Claire Zulkey

Part of a two-week series on the pull of bad influences in our lives and in the culture.

I found out that I was pregnant on Christmas Day, 2011. I am due on September 4. I had my first drink (not counting a sip of champagne on New Year’s) on March 25, 2012. It was a Michelob Ultra I received after finishing the Shamrock Shuffle 8K. I figured that I earned the beer after running the race, without stopping, in under an hour, plus, a Michelob Ultra hardly counts as a drink. It was delicious and felt a little bit naughty, which was a sensation I realized I missed from drinking. Then again, drinking when you’re 19 is a different kind of naughty than drinking when you’re pregnant.

Even before I got pregnant, I knew I would probably be a woman who drank alcohol during her pregnancy. I knew it because of the wonderfully convenient anecdotal evidence of my pregnant friends who drank the occasional glass or wine or two and who then produced healthy babies (not to mention the millions of us on the planet who made it into adulthood, successfully, despite tippling moms). I knew it because of a few studies that conveniently backed up my suspicions that a little bit of drinking was fine, including the one released this week. (While a “safe amount” of alcohol has yet to be determined, many researchers seem to think it’s a bit extreme to say that “no” alcohol is the only safe amount. Many other researchers disagree.) Also, I knew I would drink because when it comes to certain non-dire activities that pregnant women are often publicly shamed out of doing — typically, convenient or enjoyable activities like drinking limited quantities of caffeine or alcohol or formula-feeding — I want to do that thing.

This is a stupid side of me, a side that doesn’t always want to do as I’m told. I blame my mother for this; she is unapologetic about having smoked while she was pregnant with me, formula-feeding from day one, putting me to sleep face-down and for letting me “cry it out.” (I should mention that I think my mother is terrific, and I’ve had a very blessed, lucky life, despite these so-called travails.)

Since that first Michelob Ultra, I’ve had several more drinks. Mostly at a special occasion — a birthday celebration, wedding, or vacation. Mostly one at a time. Usually no more than a couple of times in a week.

And now, as I type this, it’s all starting to sound like an awful lot.

It’s not like I drank my drinks to spite anyone. I drank them because I really enjoyed them, because they felt like treats. With each drink I felt normal, like an adult and not a person on probation. And I know I’m not a doctor, but the amount I drank didn’t feel like it could hurt anyone, not me or the person inside me. “Everything in moderation,” I’ve been told, and I like that mentality (“everything” of course basically means caffeine and alcohol and exercise and junk food. I haven’t smoked cigarettes or taken any illegal drugs or punched myself hard in the belly, not even once, since becoming pregnant.)

I am extremely good at rationalizing it all here and with people who agree with me. But the thing with drinking while pregnant — while making the decision not to adhere the letter of the law when it comes to the stuff you should and shouldn’t do — is that rationalizing it to anyone else starts feeling… what is the word I’m looking for? Oogy.

After an island vacation, where I enjoyed two frozen drinks a day (I traveled with a neurosurgeon, an oncologist and a dermatologist who all gave me the enthusiastic go-ahead, though I realize they’re not obstetricians), I sent my food and drink logs to my therapist, who, over the years, has helped me with weight-and-mental-health issues. “Did you count how many drinks you had over your vacation?” she asked me, and the answer was no, I didn’t. I wrote down how many drinks a day I had but I knew if I added them all up, the number would not look great, late-second-trimester or not. I felt indefensible. I felt like an idiot. I felt like a lush. It was possible I had broken my baby and all I could say was that I had a pretty good time doing it.

The tsk-tskers that I hypothetically had had such a good time giving the middle finger to came screaming in my ear. “I’m sorry, but is it really so hard to avoid drinking alcohol for nine whole months?” is a common refrain on message boards that deal with pregnancy and alcohol. The message is, of course, that not only are you a bad person for drinking while pregnant, you probably have substance abuse problems as well, and shame on you for both.

For what it’s worth, I saw my therapist last week and she clarified, “I’m not worried that you hurt the baby. I was worried about how the drinking affected you.” She was concerned I’d feel guilty, which, you know, made me feel guilty. But maybe I needed to confront my latent guilt (and then let it go, because while drinking during the pregnancy could be questionable, drinking-and-then-feeling-consistently-awful-about-it can’t be better).

Obviously, I know what I’m doing is not recommended by most doctors, because the one person I have not talked about all this with is my obstetrician. I have a few reasons for this. One: she’s never asked. Two: she doesn’t really know me; I’ve seen her about three times in addition to rotating through a cast of other OB’s. Unlike my other health professionals, she doesn’t know that I know my limits and am not a compulsive liar who says “two drinks” when I really had six drinks, and so why even go there? Three: I know she would disapprove. I tell myself that as long as I’m letting other people know I’m drinking, that it’s not a secret, then it’s not as shameful as I think it is, but still: a little shame, yes.

I regret and don’t regret my drinks so far. Some of them were so unbelievably good — that one thing that really hit the spot. But at the same time, I don’t really know what’s right, even if, deep down, I think things will probably be okay. If light to moderate drinking from the second trimester on is fine, I will be fine, but what if I had one drink more than moderate? What if I screwed up and I hurt someone who is not me and the damage is permanent?

(I do sometimes entertain the idea that by having a few drinks while pregnant, I preemptively screwed up, so that I will enter motherhood knowing that I am inherently flawed as a parent as opposed to thinking I created a perfect child and then suffering a clear moment of agonizing guilt where it all goes awry after I bonk the kid on the head or let him/her scream longer than seems right. I’ve already screwed up, so the next screw-up won’t feel that painful. I’m pre-guilting.)

Moderation has served me well in life up to this point and I’d like to think that I have good instincts. What are instincts in a pregnancy, though? We’re told to listen to the voice inside of us that says when it’s time to relax and take it easy, when it’s time to call the doctor. But my instincts also led me to think I know my body well enough to know how to treat it when I’m pregnant which includes drinking. Which is or isn’t wrong. So should I not have listened to myself? Or listen at some times and not others? I can’t wait for this all to raise its head come labor time, when women are also advised to listen to their instincts — but only to a point.

I only know what I know and don’t know what I don’t know, while my husband knows less and doesn’t-know even more, which is why he wasn’t so sure about those first few drinks either. As he told me: “You see those signs every time you’re in a restaurant or a bar about not drinking while pregnant, and I even had a class in college where the professor did this hypothetical scenario about what if you were a waiter and a pregnant woman ordered a margarita, how you would deal with the legalities and moralities of that. So while I trust you, there are all those years of exposure to the withhold-everything side of the country that are hard to get out of your brain.” I didn’t want to make him worry or be disappointed in me, but not enough not to do what I wanted. (Once our doctor-friends told him that it was safe for me to drink moderately in my second trimester on, though, he was much more at-ease with the whole situation. “I want you to have a drink,” he said one night when I’d cooked a four-course dinner for the family. And I did.)

If I had to do it all again from the start, knowing what I know now, I’m not sure that my skin is quite thick enough, my confidence in my own decisions quite that strong to drink again. But that feels disingenuous, as being in the process of writing this piece didn’t stop me from having a shandy at an outdoor party last week. Maybe I blame all the noise out there that has me second-guessing my every other move (I thought I was so lucky that I had friends who passed down a crib and a carseat to me — turns out that I’m actually just a cheapskate who would rather save a buck than keep my baby from dying of SIDS or a fiery car wreck). Maybe (or maybe not even maybe, maybe “definitely”) I’m just selfish. And maybe navigating through all of this is just the tiniest taste of all that’s to come. So, bottoms up.

Previously in series: Bad News Brenda, Drunk In China, The Writer With The Pink Velvet Pants and A Little History Of Blackmail

Claire Zulkey lives in Chicago. You can learn so much more about her here.

Is there a name for the psychological cozy feeling when you’re finally not the last person in a long line?

— Choire Sicha (@Choire) June 22, 2012

In the interminable Stumptown morning line that spills into the lobby of the Ace Hotel every day (LOL, I know, but it’s the only place for good coffee drinks by our office), I was last in line for a while and then this friendly fox sidled up behind me and was like “Aren’t you thrilled that you’re not the last last in line anymore?” I was! There ought to be a word for that, we agreed. Part of it is obviously related to the sunk cost fallacy — like, “this invested time that is stupid now has meaning because it has meaning to others!” — but there’s something more. Here are your terribly excellent suggestions.

the Human Centipede Syndrome

— Adrian Chen (@AdrianChen) June 22, 2012

resqueued

— Don Willmott (@Donwillmott) June 22, 2012

“satisqueueity”

— adam shuck (@liketheverb) June 22, 2012

Cuephoria?

— Alex Ward (@Whistle_Jacket) June 22, 2012

bookended?

— Jen Doll (@thisisjendoll) June 22, 2012

Smug claustrophobia?

— Marcail M W (@MarcailM) June 22, 2012

Superiority.

— Elon Green (@elongreen) June 22, 2012

Let’s make one up! English here, looove queuing. Suggest “eukathysterisis”, means “the quality of a jolly good wait” ish. Greeks?

— Rob Beschizza (@Beschizza) June 22, 2012

GESUNDHEIT!

On a Greek tip, what about ‘ataraxia’? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ataraxia

— Kabarett Spielraum (@spielraum) June 22, 2012

Gemütlichqueued!

— Arika Okrent (@arikaokrent) June 22, 2012

Bless you as well!

And….

OCDMV

— Jason Gay (@jasonWSJ) June 22, 2012

.@MikeBloomberg says he will sign bill penalizing taxi drivers who engage in sex-trafficking after all.

— Dana Rubinstein (@danarubinstein) June 22, 2012

“There is no iota of evidence linking yellow medallion taxi cabs to sex trafficking,” as the head of the taxi drivers alliance put it, but now cab drivers face a $10,000 fine for knowingly transporting trafficked victims. That’s good! But pretty sure that’s already a couple of crimes, if you’re transporting an unwilling person? Called “accessory” and/or “aiding and abetting”? And “false imprisonment”? And “kidnapping”? So in this case, cab drivers also face the risk of a $10,000 fine and license revocation for transporting people going who are going to work. Do you really expect the state to drawn clear distinctions in these matters?

“Using a smartphone app, [Atlantic] print readers will be able to scan select pages of the magazine, giving them access to video interviews and other multimedia content typically only available to website and tablet readers…. Readers must either interact with or skip a quiz-based ad from Prudential every single time they scan a page.”
 — *Gets out print magazine, gets out iPhone, downloads app, holds app over magazine, watches ad* Um… no offense, and thank you very kindly, but I will PASS on this exciting opportunity.

Or you could stay home and do nothing, which I heartily recommend. (iTunes.)

A Little History Of Blackmail

by Jane Hu

Part of a two-week series on the pull of bad influences in our lives and in the culture.

The word “blackmail” has deceit written all over it. Nine letters to connote all the dirtiness and manipulation that comes with the threat of disclosure. But when you think of “blackmail,” do you picture, well, mail? Confidential missives that threaten to enter the wrong hands? I’m always reminded of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Purloined Letter,” where the narrative winds to follow the possible locations of an incriminating letter. In daytime soaps and murder mysteries, blackmail regularly happens through the transfer of mail. As we know, letters are by nature compromising — not only forms of material evidence, they’re also an intimate form of communication, presumed to be penned with the intention of being for your eyes only.

But when it comes to the word’s actual origins, the association is a false one. “Blackmail” does not derive, as one might conjecture, from “letters of evil intent.” Instead, the word originates from the 16th century “black-maill,” where “maill” had nothing to do with letters, but instead meant “rent” or “tax.” Landowners paid “black-maill” in return for protection from looters. The etymological through-line — at least given our current understanding of the word — was that payment was made to the looters themselves. A lose-lose situation, indeed, when one is coerced into preemptively paying one’s robbers.

The can’t-win-ness of the situation didn’t end there. 16th-century legislature tried to put a stop to the injustice by threatening to kill whoever engaged in black-maill, regardless of whether you were doing the robbing or the one being robbed. The first textual account of black-maill appears in a 1530 Scottish document where serial looter, one Adam Scot, ended his career with a beheading.

Blackmail, in this sense, had finite limits — a concrete amount of possessions or money that people could “willingly” give up. While we may no longer think of blackmail in terms of material objects of exchange, the initial meaning of blackmail actually stays pretty close to contemporary understandings of the act. Blackmail is what happens when a person accedes something, not because he or she wants to, but because it’s better than losing something else.

As a narrative, however, modern blackmail has evolved. The choices presented by 16th-century blackmail were limited: either one gave up one’s possessions, or had them taken by force. The outcome remained, more or less, the same. By comparison, the crimes and consequences of 19th-century blackmail were vastly more sophisticated. As literary canon spanning from the British sensation novel to French realism (Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret, Émile Zola’s Rougon-Macquart series, most of Sherlock Holmes) will tell you, there are worst things than losing money. One example: losing your dignity. Sometimes, no amount of money can ease the devastation of a roomful of judgmental stares (Lily Bart, I’m looking at you). Alexander Welsh’s landmark book George Eliot and Blackmail (buy it! read it!) focuses only on Eliot’s oeuvre, but his thesis expands across the long 19th century: at the heart of the Victorian novel is the blackmail plot.

If the whole point of blackmail is to control your victim without leaving any trace of doing so, then how does one research truly successful acts of blackmail? Blackmail only works when the information that would indict one’s victim is not leaked. Both blackmailer and victim share the desire to keep information private. Blackmail is counterintuitive. In the 1890s, banker Edwin Main Post and his wife Emily Post (yes, of the etiquette books) shocked New York when they disclosed their personal secrets rather than accede to the blackmail threat of a newspaper publisher. In theory, the Posts did something no one — blackmailer and victim alike — wishes to see happen. But if blackmail is fundamentally a question about control, then Edwin Post decided that telling on himself was better than giving that option to anyone else.

In “The Purloined Letter,” police spend days scrounging through the criminal’s apartment, cracking apart every book spine in the hope of finding the stolen letter. Little do they know (or expect) that the dirty data is hidden in plain sight, hanging on a card rack. Poe’s purloined letter reminds us that knowledge is often most menacing when easily accessible. The art of blackmail means never having to release information, but always suggesting that one could.

For the shy and passive aggressive, blackmail might be the perfect means of control. Hone your blackmailing chops and you can utilize them in a range of scenarios: betrayal, revenge, moral castigation (theirs, not yours). With the cat not yet out of the bag, you can sit back and watch others enact dramas as they try to keep that cat safely confined. The less you tell, the more they’re likely to do. No wonder soap opera plots run on the clichés of backmail narratives — blackmailing is just a synonym for cliffhanger. It’s not over until the blackmailer squeals.

Previously in series: Bad News Brenda, Drunk In China and The Writer With The Pink Velvet Pants

Jane Hu thinks it’s always nice to write your blackmail notes by hand.

A humpback whale off the coast of Nova Scotia is magic.

Or…

This is a new, CGI viral ad campaign from General Mills, who are bringing back their “swirled whale marshmallows” gimmick from the ‘80s.