Serious Answers to Random Internet Queries: Polygamy Allergies, Childbirth Chainsaws, and Pudding

On the backend of this site, we’re able to see all sorts of reader statistics. Like, how many views an article gets on a certain day, or what sites readers click through to read our articles. One interesting section is the one on “search referrals.” If you’re not familiar with that, that’s where someone does an internet search, and then for some reason they see one of our articles and click on it. (I say “for some reason” because a good portion of the search terms are for porn.) So here are some of the searches from the past quarter, answered seriously (ish).

“how do they call people allergic to polygamy”

I searched around for “polygamy allergies” but I couldn’t find any definitive answers. So, either allergies to polygamy don’t exist, or we just haven’t thought of a cool name for them yet, which gives us an exciting opportunity to create a new portmanteau! Readers, this is your chance to make up a word for a heretofore-undescribed “condition”! My suggestions include: poly-averse, amor-itis, bigamy fever, plural disparage, sister hives.

“can i give a pudding if my child didnt eat his dinner”

Just to get this out of the way…

HOW CAN YOU HAVE ANY PUDDING, IF YOU DON’T EAT YER MEAT???

On a more serious note, if your kid is not eating dinner because they want dessert (unless we’re talking about a blood pudding or other savory meanings for the word “pudding”), there are a lot of thoughts about that. If your kid isn’t eating their dinner, maybe you should try some different healthy options to see what they like? According to one study, we shouldn’t call veggies “healthy,” we should call them “tasty,” because if we refer to food as having health benefits instead of tasting good, that sends the message that healthy food isn’t yummy. (It’s like, saying someone has a good personality instead of saying they’re attractive–no matter what they look like.) Or you could try getting your kid more involved in the cooking process, because being involved with food before it’s time to eat is very engaging, and eating what you have prepared is satisfying. If your kid doesn’t like their dinner, and if they’re old enough, suggest that they cook a dinner for the family one night.

If you find that your kid wants dessert more than dinner, just stop buying junky desserts. I’ve heard it said that “if you don’t buy it, you won’t eat it, ” and that’s the general rule I follow in my house. (Or else I would just be eating dessert all the time too.) There are more healthy options that are just as tasty, like a baked apple, or a berry/yogurt smoothie, or baked bananas.

“sleep”

Hahahaha. Good luck clicking on a parenting blog for good advice about how to get sleep! Maybe this person was too sleepy to type “how to deal with sleep deprivation after having a baby.” My kid technically “sleeps through the night,” if you don’t count that fun hour in the middle of the night where she wakes up and rolls around, trying to get comfortable for an hour. Or the times she wakes up in our bed and starts identifying the parts of my face really loudly.

Speaking of “sleep,” do you remember that movie Stir of Echoes, with Kevin Bacon? It’s a pretty decent paranormal horror movie, and there is one scene at the beginning that is super creepy, where Kevin Bacon is being hypnotized, and the hypnotist makes him close his eyes and imagine being in a really old theater that is pitch black. And then she tells him that the movie screen is on and there’s a single word on it, but it’s blurry, so he has to focus on the screen, and it says “SLEEP.” Anyway, it’s an eerie scene with amazing (and scary) visuals, so watch it and never sleep again:

“chainsaw invented for childbirth”

This sounds like a horrifying scene from a scary movie, but it’s totally real, and our own J.G. Hovey wrote up an article about it. Warning: gird your pelvis before reading further. Ouch!

“pregnant barbie giving birth”

Does such a Barbie exist? I’ve seen the pregnant Barbies before (technically, Midge is the pregnant one), but the baby is “born” by taking the entire stomach off (like the c-section of my nightmares) instead of coming out of the vagina. There are anatomically-correct dolls that “give birth” through the vagina (which is a helpful way to explain birth to kids if you’re more into visual aids). And there are also a ton of Youtube videos that I didn’t click on.

By the way, I totally had a friend who had the pregnant Midge when I was a kid–it was a coveted doll. Who doesn’t want a cute tiny baby doll to play with? Apparently the pregnant Midge was recalled after a bunch of complaints from parents about how she set a bad example for kids. But to be honest, my Barbies were acting out scenarios waaay worse than giving birth. (Like that one time that Ken ditched Barbie at the prom so he could hook up with Skipper. I know how that sounds, but when I was a kid, I just thought that Skipper was short and athletic, not a tween!)

“show me some good and bad”

I like this query, it’s open ended. The first thing I thought of was those “Good Idea, Bad Idea” shorts from Animaniacs. I grew up in the ’90s, so I watched that show all the time. In honor of nostalgia, here is a compilation of Mr. Skullhead acting out good and bad ideas:

Readers, show us some good and bad in the comments!

Featured Image: an encyclopedia set (a.k.a. those books people read before the Internet existed)