Entry 313: Christmas Edition 2015

Another year, another Christmas.  Man, they are really flying by, aren't they?  It seems like just yesterday I was sucking on Lifesavers with my siblings, flipping through the Sport Magazine that came in my stocking waiting impatiently for my parents to wake up so we could get to the "really" gifts.  But that was, what, 25 years ago?  Closer to 30.  I still have all my Sport Magazines in a box in my basement and the earliest one is 1986.  It has Walter Payton on the cover.  He died over 15 years ago.  Crazy.

[Some cool old footage of Walter Payton playing quarterback (!)]

But this Christmas has special meaning because it's the first one in which Lil' S1 really gets it.  Last year he was still a bit too young to fully comprehend what was going on, but this year he's all about it.  And he's still very much in the "me" stage of his life (only about 22 more years to go on that one), so he's a little monster right now -- an adorable little monster, but a little monster nonetheless.  He thinks every gift is his and gets pouty when we tell him it's for somebody else.  He also has no appreciation for or perspective on anything.  The first gift he opened was this cool play set with spinning blocks from his Ava and Thatha (it was actually for his baby brother, but like I said, he's convinced everything is his), and he got all mopey upon seeing it and said, "I wanted an Octonauts present."  At school they teach the kids a saying, "You get what you get and don't get upset," so I repeated that line to him, and he started crying and said, "Don't say that to me!"

But the flip-side of that coin is when he finally did open the Octonauts present he erupted in ecstasy that would have warmed the cockles of even the coldest heart: "Oh!!!! Octonauts!!!  See!  I told you so!  I told you it was an Octonauts present!  Oh!!! Captain Barnacles!  Peso!  Look at all my Octonauts!"  And then he went to sleep last night (we exchanged most our gifts on Christmas Eve) with two pieces of track from a snap-together Octonauts set.  Out of all his gifts those are the ones he wanted to sleep with -- not action figures, not cars, but two long plastic pieces of track.  I tried to talk him into something else because I didn't want to lose those pieces, but that's what he wanted, so ... whatever.  He was in bed and happy -- that's a win pretty much anyway you slice it.  Taking care of a three-year-old is a bit like hanging out with somebody who is manic depressive.  They go from bouncing off the walls with joy to lying prostrate on the floor bawling in distress to bouncing off the walls again in the time it takes you to put something on Netflix just so you can have a moment of peace.

[I have a theory that Captain Barnacles from "Octonauts" and the doctor from "Downton Abbey" are the same creature.  It's even better when you hear them both speak.]

Christmas for me, personally, is going pretty well so far.  Both in-laws are in town, which is nice, but it means I have to sleep on our lumpy futon in the basement.  (Actually, tiered is a better descriptor for our futon than lumpy.  There are two halves, separated where it folds, and one is several inches higher than the other.  So you have to pick a level, or if you, like me, are too big to fit on any one side, you just have to sleep straddling the tiers in a very unsatisfying position.)  We are one bed short, and we can't get Lil' S1 to sleep on a mat or on the carpet yet.  Well, we can, but halfway through the night, he invariably climbs into bed with us, and since all three of us don't fit anymore, one has to go, and that usually means me.  So I generally skip the 3:00 a.m. round of musical beds and just go to the basement straightaway.

Tonight we are going to our friends for dinner and then tomorrow S and I are going to see Star Wars with some other friends.  We saw The Martian over Thanksgiving, and seeing two movies in the theater in a span of less than a month is a holiday miracle.  For one thing, it's very difficult to conjure up the time and energy to see a movie; for another thing, it's difficult for S and I to see something that we both might like that she hasn't already seen.  Yesterday she wanted to rent a movie, and we had the following conversation:

Me: Okay, what about Nightcrawler?  It's got Jake Gyllenhaal in it.  It's supposed to be good.
Her: I've seen it already.
Me: Alright, American Hustle?

Her: I've seen that one too.

Me: How about The Intimidation Game?

Her: The one about Stephen Hawking?  I've seen that one too.

Me: No, you're thinking about the other one.  The Intimidation Game is about the English mathematician Alan Turning.  He helped cracked the Nazi's code during World War II.

Her: Oh, right.  I've seen that one too.

Me: [Shake my head and walk away]

I actually was legitimately annoyed.  It's admittedly a petty reason to be annoyed, but she's always talking about how we should watch more things together instead of zoning out into our own computers at night like we usually do, but then she watches everything I might have a slight interest in by herself.  She does the same thing with TV shows.  Now, in her defense, she had a lot of down time on maternity leave and often just wanted to watch something while she rocked the baby to sleep (also she went on a work trip to Africa earlier this year and she watched like ten movies on the flights), but still -- just set aside two or three things we can watch together.  That's all I ask.

Alright, I should go now.  I can hear Lil' S1 upstairs arising from his nap.  It's only a matter of time before he comes downstairs, sees me on my computer and starts bothering me: I wanna press the buttons... I wanna see the crossword puzzle game... Hey Daddy, how 'bout we print something?  How 'bout that?

Have a Merry Christmas!  Or if you, like me, are a nonbeliever, just enjoy another day on this world.  They come in limited supply.

Until next time ...

Entry 312: Another Crossword Puzzle

Hey everybody, I got another crossword puzzle published at the New York Times.  You should check it out.  I would link to it, but the daily NYT puzzles are behind a paywall.  The best way to get it (if you don't have an online puzzle subscription) is to buy a dead-tree version of today's New York Times.  As always, I put up a post about it at my puzzle blog.  Because of this I'm not putting up an entry (other than this one) at this blog this week.  Here's the link to my puzzle post (warning: contains spoilers).

And here's a picture that may or may not help you with 1-Down.

Entry 311: 'Tis the Season

'Tis the season...

[Bah, humbug!]

And here at the G & G household that means, well, not too much.  We usually visit my family during the summer and S's family for Thanksgiving, and by the time we get done with all that, we have little, if any, vacation leave to spend on Christmas.  Plus, I'm not sure if we are really going to celebrate Christmas as a familial tradition.  I mean, we will celebrate it, but I don't know if we will celebrate it.  We haven't quite worked it out yet.  S never celebrated Christmas growing up, and while I did, and it was one of my favorite days of the year, I now realize it wasn't because it was *Christmas* (Jesus Christ never even crossed my mind during Christmas as a child -- I was just in it for the material goods), but because it was a special day I spent with my family.  If we celebrated Arbor Day, I'm sure I would have fond memories of Arbor Day.

But Lil' S1 already knows that Christmas means something different to most people ("Look! Look! Christmas time!" He said when we saw a big decorated tree), so we might start doing something for the kids' sake.  This year on Christmas Day we are going to some friends' for dinner and then probably doing a gift exchange over Skype with my family, which seems like a decent enough amount of yuletide activity.  We haven't put up decorations or bought a tree or anything like that.  Dealing with pine needles and rotting tree trunks is a bridge too far at this point.

We also bought Lil' S1 some gifts this year, but S mistakenly opened the shipping box in front of him thinking it was something else.  His eyes got huge as he saw a bunch of Toy Story action figures, and he went into full-on spazz-out mode: "Buzz Lightyear!  Is that mine, Amma?  Is that Buzz Lightyear mine?  That's my Buzz Lightyear, right?!  Amma, can you open it?  That's mine!  Is that my Buzz Lightyear?  Hey!  There's Woody too!  Amma is that my Woody? That's my Woody, right? That Woody is mine ..."  What are we going to say at that point?  That bell cannot be unrung.  Best just to let him have them a few weeks early and avoid a Three Mile Island-esque meltdown.  

[This movie came out "only" 20 years ago!]

This year Christmas Eve and Christmas Day fall on a Thursday and Friday, respectively, which, at first blush, seems like a good thing.  However, upon further consideration, it's probably not, because it means four straight days trying to entertain two kids, one of whom is at the age where temper tantrums still seem like a keen negotiation strategy.  I'm not sure what we are going to do with our kids for that long weekend, but I assure you that going into the office on the 23rd will be far more relaxing than the holidays at home.  A bunch of my coworkers will be on vacation; my workload will be light; it will be peaceful and quiet; and there are always holiday related goodies in the office.  I can sit at my desk, sip coffee, eat a cookie, do a little work, eat another cookie, do a little more work, have some more coffee -- aah! -- I'm enjoying it already.

One possible saving grace is that it has been unseasonable warm here in DC, so if this weather holds, we can take Lil' S1 to the park over the long weekend.  Being able to do stuff outside makes having young kids so much easier.  Anthropogenic climate change might be quickly making the Earth uninhabitable for human beings, but I'll be damned if 68 degree temperatures in mid-December aren't incredibly pleasant.

In other news, S went back to work this week after being on maternity leave for the past four months.  It's been going relatively well, truth be told.  S's mom is staying with us again, which really helps.  She's the "shutdown corner" on the baby, which allows S and I to play zone against Lil' S1 and occasionally give her mom help over-the-top (sorry for the strained sports analogy; I've been watching too much football lately).  Oh, S's mom also cooks.  She's a shutdown corner who cooks.  She's like Richard Sherman, if Richard Sherman made really good masala dosas.

Also, I got a gym membership, which is good.  Maybe I can finally start exercising regularly again.  We took Lil' S1 to this sports-plex place over Thanksgiving break, where they have trampolines and bouncy houses and pits full of foam bricks and stuff like that, and I went on a trampoline and instantly hurt my back, and then I tried to climb up a rope and struggled to even get off the ground.  Back in my wrestling days ("only" 20 years ago!), I could climb up a rope without even using my feet.  So the fact that I could barely do the equivalent of a pull-up was very distressing to me.  I'm going to start hitting the weights a couple times a week, and I'm also thinking about taking a boxing or maybe a kickboxing class.  What I would really like to do is MMA (I think I could be the next Holly Holm), but I don't think they offer it at my gym.

It's nice because S has been into the gym lately, and they offer cheap childcare, so it's something we can do as a family.  You know you are married with kids when your "family time" consists of you and your spouse listening to Serial on separate iPhones, while you run on adjacent treadmills, as your kids watch SpongeBob, while a 19-year-old gym employee trying to work her way through community college student supervises them.

But, we are doing pretty well, all things considered.  Lil' S1 is at that age where like 75% of what comes out of his mouth is comedy gold, so you don't even appreciate how funny it is anymore.  I think starting school -- real school, not daycare -- is really helping his really helping his development.  I can see why Obama is so big on universal early childhood education.  Of course, I have plenty of complaints about Lil' S1's school (I have complaints about everything, although I like to think of them as "constructive criticisms"), but overall I like it a lot.

One thing I don't like is that they get homework.  I've become pretty anti-homework in general, but especially so for PK kids.  They're just too young for it.  They don't appreciate the responsibility of it yet, and obviously they can't keep track of anything, so basically homework just becomes an assignment for the parents -- as if we don't have enough on our plates.  What keeping my kid safe and fed and healthy isn't enough? I also have to get him to scribble something on a piece of paper, so that we can turn it in the next morning and say he did his "artwork?"  No thank you.

Actually, I take issue with homework on a larger scale, but I will have to get to that another time.  Now I gotta hit the gym.

Until next time...

Entry 310: Joe Pancake

I will admit, I have been really struggling to find time to post to this blog the past month or so.  This is due to a few things, but the primary reasons are my young kids, my job, and the fact that I need to sleep more than three hours a night.  So once my sons grow up, I retire, and I start taking speed, I will have plenty of time!  Until then I will just have to make due with what I got, and this weekend it is not looking like I got much.  We are booked with toddler birthdays, dinner dates (i.e., meeting another family at Nandos), and personal training appointments (not me, my wife, but the obligations trickle down to me).

So it's three-and-out for me this evening.

1.  Yet another mass shooting.  Sigh.  I hate guns, and what I hate almost as much as guns are the pro-gun arguments of people who love guns.  They are, by and large, awful, simplistic, childish arguments.  I certainly don't have time to really get into it now, so I'll just take down one particular argument.  Every time one of these shootings happens a chorus of anti-gun control people pose some variant of the question -- "Don't you wish one of the potential victims had a gun to stop the shooters?" -- and I never like the answer people, even pro-gun control people, give.  So here is the correct answer:  A) It depends; B) The question is incomplete, and when you complete it, the answer is no.  

A)  If this fabled "good person with a gun" has training with a firearm and has battle training to handle stressful situations (e.g., a police officer or a soldier), then, yes, I do wish that.  If this person is some yahoo who thinks taking a little target practice with an assault rifle at a shoot range makes him (or her, I suppose, but usually him) Bruce Willis in Die Hard, then, no, I don't wish that, because they are just as likely to exacerbate the situation, than they are to fix it.

B)  Wishing somebody has a gun does nothing.  Somebody actually has to have a gun for the John McClane theory to work, and in order for this to happen, since these shootings happen at completely random places and times, this means almost everybody has to have a gun with them at all times.  Christmas party -- gun!  English class -- gun!  Taking your kid to school -- gun!  Get your wallet, get your keys, get your cellphone, get your gun!  And so the complete question to ask is -- "Don't you wish almost everybody carried a gun with them at all times so that we could stop mass shooters?" -- to which my answer is an emphatic "no!"  Mass shootings casualties might go down, but gun accidents would sky rocket.  Think about how irresponsible most the people you interact with are, now think about them guns.  Pleasant thoughts?

2.  Once upon a time, I was against gun control (but then I grew up -- zing!); I wrote an essay about it in eighth grade.  For the essay, we had to list 10 different sources.  This was back in the day, when sources were difficult to find.  They came from little cards in the library, not from Google.  I only had about seven, so I started making up names of authors and books.  I told my friend SH that our teacher wouldn't even check them closely, so to prove it to her, I put ridiculous names for the made-up authors.  One of them was Joe Pancake.  Years later, she reminded me of this, and we had a good laugh.  Since then I've adopted it on occasion as a pseudonym for commenting on websites (particularly crossword puzzle websites), and I've renamed my blog about crossword puzzles and Scrabble "Joe Pancake."  This is particularly relevant because I just published a puzzle at BuzzFeed.  You can read about it here if you so wish.  (And you can solve it here first, if you wish.)

3.  R.I.P. Scott Weiland.  I didn't really like STP when they first came out, because I thought they sounded like a bad Pearl Jam imitation, but I really grew to appreciate their music through the years.  I saw them in Newcastle, Australia in 2011 during their brief reunion, and I was half-expecting a money-grab, mail-it-in, we're-old-and-strung-out-now show, but I was pleasantly surprise.  They fucking rocked!  It was super fun.  Weiland's death surprises nobody, but it sad all the same.

Until next time...

Entry 309: Smoke Alarms are the Bane of My Existence

I've mentioned before in a previous post how much I hate smoke alarms -- not the function they provide, which is obviously very important, but how unnecessarily annoying it is to change their batteries.  I won't reiterate my anti-smoke alarm screed in this post; instead I shall regale you with a new smoke-alarm-related tale of woe.  The story is this ...

S took the kids to her parents' in South Carolina on Monday for an extended Thanksgiving break.  Since I have to work, I will not be joining them until next weed.  On Tuesday, S calls me on Facetime, and before we start to chat, before I even say "hello," I hear that unmistakably irritating beep in the background: *CHIRP*.  We proceed to a conversation something like as follows,

Me: Hello
*CHIRP*
Her: Hey Babe, how's it going?
*CHIRP*
Me: Fine... What's going on with that smoke detector beeping?
*CHIRP*
Her [laughing]: I knew that was going to be the first thing you mentioned!  I told my mom that!
*CHIRP*
[Her mom laughs in the background.]
*CHIRP*
Me: How could I not?  That thing is beeping like every two seconds, literally.  You have to change it.  It's going to drive me crazy, and I'm not even there!
*CHIRP*
Her: I know.  But we can't change it.  You know how my parents have really high ceilings?  It's all the way at the top.
*CHIRP*
Me: Don't you have a ladder or something?  Can't you call somebody with a ladder?
*CHIRP*
Her: We tried.  It's like 25 feet high.  We need a really tall ladder.  We don't have one, nobody we know has one.  We called some friends.
*CHIRP*
Me: You need to buy a ladder or something.
*CHIRP*
Her [becoming increasingly exacerbated]:  Babe... We don- ... We don't even have a car that can get a ladder.  Plus, you know my dad is old and hurt his shoulder.  He can't handle a ladder or climb up on one or anything like that.
*CHIRP*
Me:  So what's your plan?  You're just going to live in a house for two weeks with a dead smoke detector that's constantly beeping?
*CHIRP*
Her: Yes!  It doesn't bother us.
*CHIRP*
Me [in utter disbelief]: Wha-! ... Wha-! ... How can that not bother you?!  That is insane!  It is a loud beep every two seconds!  It is meant to drive you crazy so that you change the battery!  How can nobody be bothered by that?!  What about the kids?  Does it bother them?
*CHIRP*
Her [panning over to Lil' S1 who is sitting at the table playing with toy cars]: Does this beeping bother you?
*CHIRP*
Him [noticing me on the phone]: Daddy!  I went for a walk today with Tha-tha, but there were no ducks.
*CHIRP*
Her [pointing phone back at her]: There's your answer.
*CHIRP*
Me: Yeah, but still ... You've got to fix that.
*CHIRP*
Her: Babe, I tired.  None of my parents friends could help, and I don't have time to spend all day on the phone, and you aren't here to help me with either of these kids, and ...  Can we PLEASE talk about something else?
*CHIRP*
Me [under my breath]: OK, but you do need to get that fixed.

And that was that ... for a little while, at least.  The next day, I emailed S a list of handymen near her parents and begged her to have somebody come out to change the smoke detector battery.  (I tried the fire department, but they will only do it in low-income neighborhoods.)  There are two things with this: 1) I'm flying in Tuesday evening.  If I get there, and that thing is still beeping every two seconds, it might literally drive me temporarily insane.  And since I fly in at night, there won't be any way to get it fixed until the next day.  I might have to get a hotel room.  2)  Even if I don't exist in this scenario, the battery still needs to be changed!  It's beeping for a reason, and it could beep, literally, for months.  Fix the damn thing!

S, to her credit, gets on it and calls a bunch of places and gets somebody to come out.  It's not easy.  Because it's such a small job, nobody with the proper tools (i.e., a really long ladder) wants to bother with it.  But eventually she finds somebody and sets up an appointment.  But they don't come.  The reason is that this place had previously come out to do some work at my in-law's, and my father-in-law thought they were too expensive, so when they called to confirm the appointment, he canceled it!  (Unfortunately, they had his number on record from before, not S's cell phone, even though she gave it to them.)  And to make matters worse, he didn't tell S.  So eventually she calls the company to try to figure out where they are, and they explain what happened, and then she gets upset and confronts her father, and then he gets upset, and it causes an argument, and the house is in discord -- and to top it all off, the damn thing still isn't fixed!

S reschedules and the guy eventually comes out, spends like three minutes climbing up his ladder and taking out the battery, and then gives her a bill for -- get this -- $275!  She pays it and of course can't ask her parents for any reimbursement, so we spend nearly $300 to do a job that costs about $3 of manpower to do on your own (about $1.25 for the battery and another $1.75 for the three minutes of labor), and it's not even for our house.  Whatever.  I'll gladly pay the money if it means the bleeping will be stopped and the house will again will be peaceful and quiet (other than our kids, of course).

So I guess S's dad was right when he said that company was too expensive.  But the thing is, you have to overpay for something like this.  Nobody is going to come out for $20 when they could be earning x times that somewhere else.  Now, $275 is absolutely ridiculous.  That's more than we paid to have a plumber unclog a slow drain, which is a much bigger job.  And probably, given some more time, S could have found a better deal.  But that's something you start doing as soon as you hear the first beep.  S said she noticed beeps while talking to her parents on the phone months ago.  She told her dad to find somebody to fix it, and he just never did.  So that's how the price gets up to $300.  You get desperate.  Plus $300 is cheaper than the week's worth of hotel rooms I would have run up if I got there and it was still chirping every three seconds.

Anyway, I'm just glad it's over.  Apparently most modern smoke detectors don't even need a battery because they are hard-wired into the circuitry of the house.  The battery is only a backup in case the fire were to cause the power to go out.  Also, my in-law's house is very open.  Any fire would almost certainly set off every detector in the house.  The only reason that detector was even there is because the house builder had to follow code, which says that you must put a smoke detector six inches from the highest ceiling.  So I'm not worried about the house being unsafe.  The only bad part now (other than the money) is that S got kind of annoyed with me, because she got stuck in the middle of it all, with me telling her one thing and her dad telling her the opposite.  I understand that, and I apologized for it, but, between you and me, I don't really feel bad about it.  On the contrary, I feel like I was the voice of reason in this whole ordeal.

Anyway ... two quick thoughts on France -- real problems -- before we part.

• The attacks in Paris were horrific, and what else is horrific is the anti-refugee, anti-Muslim response of many (mostly Republican) government officials.  It's become a bit clichéd to say "This is exactly what the terrorists want."  But it's also true.  ISIS poses no existential threat to the US.  A group of 100,000 (or thereabouts) confined to a relatively small portion of the Middle East cannot eradicate a nation of $300 million protected by oceans, especially when that nation has the most advanced military in the history of civilization.  But, what terrorist can do is terrorize.  And they can facilitate the culture war they so desperately want.  The worst thing we can do right now is turn our backs on good, peace-loving Muslims.  Muslims in the US do not commit acts of terror at a higher rate than any other group, because they are relatively well-integrated into American society.  They are part of us.  We need to keep it this way.  And all it requires is treating American Muslims like we treat all other Americans.  And treating Muslim refugees like we treat Christian refugees.  It shouldn't be difficult.  But for so many of us (mainly Republicans) it is.
• As you probably noticed, a lot of people used that French flag Facebook thing to temporarily change their profile pics.  Then because this was something on the Internet, there was a backlash to it.  I understand the backlash, but I disagree with it.  The reason we care more about France than other countries is because we have a different relationship with France than other countries.  We go way back with France.  France was our ally in the Revolutionary War and in both World Wars.  They are a NATO member.  Lots of Americans visit France and have many French friends and family, and vice-versa.  We are old friends with France in a way we aren't with Lebanon or Iraq or Syria or many other countries.  It's not that French lives are objectively more important than any other lives; it's that we, as Americans, are, on the whole, tighter, and thus more sympathetic, with France than we are with these other countries.  Yes, historically, the reason for this is largely that French people are, like us, mostly white and Christian, but that isn't really relevant.  If you have an old friend you grew up with because your parents were culturally similar and then tragedy befalls this friend, it's perfectly appropriate to show support for this friend in a way you wouldn't somebody you didn't know as well.  It's the same thing at a national level.

Until next time ...

Entry 308: Everybody's Working on the Weekend

One of the best things about my job is that I'm not expected to work during non-work hours.  I typically turn my work computer off around 6:00 in the evening and do not turn it back on until about 9:30 the next morning.  I keep it off the entire weekend, and I don't have any work stuff on my personal computer -- when I'm off, I'm off.  This is, I believe, something of a rarity in the "tech" industry.  (I'd say my company is half tech, half consulting.)  I read the horror stories of people in Silicon Valley or at Amazon who essentially live in the office (why do you think those companies have gyms and daycares and cafes and other "amenities" in their buildings?) or are effectively "on call" at all hours of the day, and I think it sounds awful.

Not everybody agrees with me on this one.  I have friends who want to work -- or at least don't mind working -- longer hours because it puts them in good standing with their company (and leads to more $$$), or as my wife says when she works during her off-hours: "It actually makes things easier on me to do it now.  I mean, I have to get the work done one way or the other."  I try to point out that this is the mindset that management wants her have, that she's been brainwashed by The Man, that we are more than just cogs in our corporate overlords' moneymaking machines, and then I quote The Dead Kennedys to her, at which point, I realize that she is no longer in the room.

Anyway, I bring this up, of course, because I had to work this weekend.  On Friday I was put on a project that needs to be done by Monday -- Monday in Australia.  So basically I was up until 1:00 a.m. last night working on it.  And now I'm tired and have to do all the other things I was going to do yesterday today, so, yet again, I am short on blogging time.  This will be another brief entry.   The upside is that because I worked this weekend, I get the Wednesday before Thanksgiving off.  And also, next week I will have much more free time, as S is taking the kids to South Carolina tomorrow (I will join them the following).  I won't lie I'm looking forward to the break.

Until next time...

Entry 307: Can I Squeeze In An Entry?

If you are reading this entry, it's a minor miracle.  I've had almost no time to blog recently, and this weekend is no exception.  I've got a packed day tomorrow (a birthday party and then a visit from a friend), so I'm going to try to squeeze this in now.  I'm home alone with both kids, one of whom is sleeping and one of whom is throwing his cars off the stairs.  Can you guess which one is which?  S is out getting her nails done.  We had an agreement worked out whereby she would take the kids to Lil' S1's soccer practice in the morning, thus giving me an opportunity to sleep in (which I haven't had in months), and I in return would watch the kids in the afternoon so that she could do her thing.  It was a fine plan, except, of course, that it has been pissing down rain all day today, so soccer was canceled, and so everybody was home this morning, and so me sleeping in was (ironically) nothing more than a dream.  I definitely got the short end of the child-rearing stick with this one -- but what can you do?  It was nobody's fault and S has gotten the short end of the child-rearing stick more times than I have, so ... whatever.

Hold on ... baby is crying.  I have to take a break.

Okay, I'm back, and now my kids have switched roles.  The big one is finally down for a nap and the little one is fussing in his bassinet.  Heaven forbid they both go down at the same time.  I have trouble getting Lil' S2 calmed down when he gets riled up.  Part of the problem is that I have a trick back and if I hold him while standing for more than a few minutes, it just starts to ache unbearably, so I have to sit down, which of course he hates, as somehow babies know the position that is most uncomfortable for you, and it's the only position they want to be in.  Another part of the problem is that he doesn't take to the bottle very well.  I think he likes breastfeeding so much that he doesn't like eating in any other form.  Even when I know he's really hungry I have to coax him into drinking from the bottle, and sometimes he still doesn't take it.  There have been a few times when I've been watching him at night and I just can't get him to take the bottle, and he starts crying so loudly that S wakes up (even though I have him in the basement) and has to breastfeed him.  That's what I mean when I say she gets the short end of the child-rearing stick more times than I do.  But, you know the old saying: Heavy is the chest, who wears the milk dispensers.

Anyway...

As I mentioned in my last post, my parents were in town recently for about a week and half.  It was really nice to see them, but I didn't get to spend as much time with them as I would have liked.  I literally have zero vacation days remaining for the rest of the year, so I had to work all day, and then by the time I got back and we got the kids fed, bathed, and to bed, I was worn down to a nub and just wanted to sit on the couch and drift into my own world, which doesn't cohere well with having company.  But the good thing about family is that they are family.  My parents completely understood, and they got to see the baby, which was the main point of the trip.  Also, my dad did a bunch of handyman work, which was awesome.  He fixed a light fixture, replaced a damaged (and dangerous) electrical socket, cleaned out the trap in our dishwasher, helped me put up a door, and replaced a broken plug on a lamp.  Those are things about being a homeowner that I'm just not good at.

We also had a good weekend in Pennsylvania.  We went to Sesame Place on Halloween.  Sesame Place, as you can probably surmise, is a Sesame Street themed amusement park outside of Philadelphia.  It's pretty cool.  Lil' S1 was a bit too small to go on most the rides, but there was still plenty of stuff for him to do.  He went down a giant slide, like, ten times, and he played for a long time on this big net stuffed full of yoga balls that also has a slide at the top.  That thing was kid anarchy -- "Lord of the Flies," as my dad called it.  

I was curious to see how Lil' S1 would behave.  He's a good climber, but he's small, so he gets pushed around (usually inadvertently) by bigger kids.  Sometimes at the playground if there are too many older kids with him on a big toy, he gets irritated and finds something else to do.  But he stuck with it and held his own pretty well.  He did two things that cracked me up: 1) He put his hand up in a stop gesture at a kid who was encroaching on his space (the kid stopped, despite being about twice Lil' S's size); 2) He asked a bigger kid to give him a boost at a particularly precipitous spot (which she did).

After visiting the amusement park, we went to a nearby hotel where we stayed the night.  I had an event in Philly that I needed to attend, so my parents fed the little man and put him to bed.  The next morning we went to the city and saw the Liberty Bell and bummed around the neighboring environs.  It was fun.  The bell itself is pretty underwhelming -- or rather it looks just like you'd think it looks because you've seen a million photos of it (it's cracked!) -- but there are a lot of parks nearby, and it was a beautiful fall day, so it was nice to walk around and let Lil' S1 play in the leaves.  

We looked for a place to eat lunch, but everything was closed (an off-season Sunday), so we just got in the car and left.  We planned on stopping on the way and getting something to eat when we gassed up, but after driving a few miles out of the city I realized we were on empty -- like empty empty, like reserve-tank-light-flashing empty.  So I had to pull off the road ASAP and fill up, and the whole stop ended up taking like 20 minutes (my mom wanted to get water and then as soon as I put the keys in to finally leave Lil' S1 announced he had to use the bathroom), and nobody was starving, so we just drove all the way home straight through and skipped lunch.

Okay, Lil' S2 has gone from "kinda fussy" to "on the verge of a meltdown."  I had better try to feed him or something.  I kinda got an entry in.

Until next time ...

Entry 306: Lack of Entries

I have not put up any new entries in a while because my parents have been in town the past few weeks, and I've been spending the relatively little amount of free time I have with them.  Normal blogging will (hopefully) return this weekend.

Entry 305: My Favorite Cartoonist

I'm short on time and energy this weekend.  Lil' S1 has a busy schedule, which means I have a busy schedule as well.  Also, I haven't been sleeping enough.  I'm on a roughly 1:15 a.m. - 7:45 a.m. sleeping schedule, which is manageable if I can sleep-in one weekend day.  Like, if I sleep six and a half hours, six days a week, and then sleep in without an alarm on Saturday or Sunday, I'm good.  I just need on morning to totally crash out and pay off my sleep debt that accrues throughout the rest of the week.  I used to be able to do that, but now Lil' S1 has soccer Saturday mornings, and S has sessions with a personal trainer on Sunday mornings, so I'm S.O.L.

Also, I might be coming down with something.  Or I'm just feeling the effects of forgetting to drink coffee this morning.  I'm not sure.  I have a pot on now, so we will see if I feel better after I get my drug in me.

All of this is to say I don't have time for a long entry this weekend.  But I wanted to post something I saw online by Bill Watterson, the guy who wrote Calvin & Hobbes, my favorite strip of all-time.  It's a comic about "success" that really rings true to me.  One line that particularly grabs me: "Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities ... is considered a flake."  Sometimes I think that I should be more ambitious with my career -- try to "move up the ladder," try to make money, try to take on more responsibility, try to acquire more prestige.  But then I think "nah ... that sounds terrible."  And I go back to the crossword puzzle or the blog I was working on.

Anyway, here's the comic.  I found it genuinely touching.

(Note: the writing is kind of small/blurry below, so here's a link to a clearer copy.)

Entry 304: Listservs -- More Harm Than Good?

I'm on a neighborhood listserv, which sounds like a good thing in theory -- keep up with what's going on around me and whatnot -- but might not be such a good thing in practice.  For one thing, the amount of messages to read is annoying.  (I fiddled with the settings, so that I only get one actual email each day, but it often contains ten or more messages.)  For another thing, it often turns into nothing other than a crime alert, and that's what I'm unsure of.  Is that good or bad?  I want to be aware if there is a major crime spree going on in the neighborhood, but do I really need to hear everybody's individual tale about how their car was broken into?  Is that helpful or is it just alarmist?  I don't know.  (And try reading about crime and then staying up late listening to a podcast on the Charles Manson murders.  You're jumping out of your seat at the smallest creek or bump.)

Thankfully the crime in my neighborhood is mostly nonviolent, and we've experienced very little of it.  A few years ago, my in-laws' car was broken into, but that's it.  Now we don't keep anything of value in our car, except the car seats, which are actually quite expensive (one of them is at least), but, I imagine, they aren't great targets for potential thieves.  They take a few minutes to unhook and pull out of the car, and they are relatively heavy and cumbersome -- they aren't amendable to smash and grab.  Also, I like to think there is honor among thieves and that kids' stuff is off limits.  But that's probably just romantic thinking on my part.  If somebody is low enough to break into your car and take, say, your purse, they probably would take your car seat too if it was worth their while.

Having your car broken into is concerning, but it's not downright frightening like the thought of having your house burglarized.  We've never seen any signs of anybody trying to break into our house, but it does happen in my neighborhood.  I think (hope) we'll be OK, because 1) despite the individual cases that people put up on the listserv, our neighborhood is still pretty safe -- the vast majority of people aren't getting burglarized and never will (we have packages delivered almost everyday, and nobody has so much as stolen a package off our porch); 2) we have a good alarm system; 3) we're on a major road and our backyard is not accessible by a side street or an alley.  That last one seems to be key, as in every case on the listserv, the criminals accessed the back door of the house through an alley.

One reason the listserv definitely is good, however, is because it brings together neighbors, so that they can coordinate possible solutions.  For example, people are talking about buying security cameras and aiming them strategically, so that they cover most the alleys, which I think is a great idea.  I'm a pro security camera guy.  I've done almost a complete 180 on them from where I used to be; whereas before I found them extremely distasteful and intrusive, now I'm OK with the idea of every public area being recorded at all times.  I'm aware of the downside -- the privacy concerns -- but I think the upside far outweighs this.

We actually have the technology to do this -- as a society, I mean.  You can put a camera in the air and have it record an entire city all day.  Once the footage is captured, the technology is so good that it can zoom in on any part of the city and see what is going on.  You can only see broad shapes, but that is often sufficient.  For example, if somebody broke into a house, you could find the house at the time of the robbery, and see what was going on outside the house.  If there was a get-away car, you could follow it to see where it went.  I learned all about this on a podcast, but I can't remember which one.  Ah ... it was Radiolab.  I recommend giving it a listen; it was a good episode.  Actually, they're all pretty good.  It's a good program.  I could go without all the noises and sound effects -- it's a bit overproduced at times -- but that's a small nit.

Anyway, I think the main reason people don't like security cameras is because a) it feels kind of creepy to know you're being recorded at all times; b) they are worried that the government is going to turn into Big Brother.  On a), I think we just need to get used to this.  The technology is there, and it isn't going away.  Even if it's not an "eye in the sky," it's security footage from a residence or a business or a passer-by with an iPhone.  Being that we all carry around with us little cameras pretty everywhere we go, we should probably just behave as if somebody is filming us all the time.

On b), I think this fear is based,literally, on fiction.  The term Big Brother is from a fictitious novel.  I think books like 1984 are so good and so powerful that we collectively forget that they are complete make-believe.  And basing your life philosophies on make-believe is a great way to lose touch with reality and look like a fool.  (See examples here and here and here.)  I mean, I love George Orwell, but what if he just got it wrong?  He wasn't a seer; 1984 isn't a prophecy (although Animal Farm seems to get truer and truer each election cycle).  Yes, things like the NSA illegally spying on citizens are concerning, but really that's still a far cry from Big Brother.  And on the flip side, what about the good that all this surveillance can do?  It seems to me technology is being used not so that the government can oppress the people, but so that people can more effectively police themselves and in many cases, police the government.  Think about it -- what's the hottest topics right now in policing?  Bodycams.

The key, in my view, is not whether or not we should exploit surveillance technology, but rather who has access to the footage.  If we all have access to it -- if, for example, anybody can go online and watch footage of any public place at any given time -- and we all know that anybody can do this, then why is this a bad thing?  Won't it just make us all safer and more accountable?  Or at the very least, won't it be better than the alternative, which is that this technology is out there and is being deployed in an ad-hoc manner of nebulous legality.  It seems to the answer is clearly yes.

But, I dunno, maybe I'm way off on this, and if we don't limit surveillance soon, it's only a matter of time before the world becomes doubleplusungood, and I'm in Room 101, sleep deprived and defeated, while the Octonauts song "Creature Report" torments me on endless loop in the background...  Oh wait, that's my life now.



Until next time...

Entry 303: Hurricane Joaquin (Andujar)

The good news is Hurricane Joaquin is almost certainly not going to hit Washington D.C. -- or anyway else is the mainland United States.  The bad news is that its residual storms are here right now.  It has been raining since Thursday morning with nothing but rain through the weekend.  I feel like I've been living on Venus for the past few days.  (That's a reference to Ray Bradbury's excellent short story "All Summer In a Day", but of course, you already knew that.)  I've been trying to come up with a good pun to described how wet it is here, and I've come up with three candidates.

1. It's not raining cats and dogs; it's raining cattle and dogies.  (Eh ... kinda weak.)
2. I guess that's why they call it WASHington.  (Not much better.)
3. We haven't had a reign this bad, for this long, since George Bush was in the White House!  (Get it -- reign/rain?  It works better verbally when there is no difference between the two, but it's not terrible written.) 

I like the name Joaquin for a hurricane, because it reminds me of Joaquin Andujar, a pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals in the '80s, who frequently resembled a hurricane on the mound because he had such a bad temper.  One of my earliest baseball memories is of him going ballistic in Game 7 of the 1985 World Series and having to be physically restrained by his teammates to keep from throttling umpire Don Denkinger.  Andjuar was a hothead and undoubtedly upset that his team was about to lose the World Series (they lost Game 7 11-0), so some of it was just his own shit.  But also the entire Cardinals team was anti-Denkinger for a notoriously awful (and crucial) call he made the game before.  In fact, it is not out of the question that Cardinals manager Whitey Herzog put the temperamental Andujar in the game (already a blowout) for the express purpose of needling Denkinger.

But enough about rain and baseball...

In other news, my kids are a pain in my neck.  Literally.  I woke up this morning with some sort of funky neck strain.  It's quite uncomfortable -- to the point "painful" might be a more apt adjective -- and I think it can be attributed to my kids.  Lil' S1 jumps on my back and climbs on me every chance he gets, and Lil' S2 is so fussy these days that the only way I can get him to calm down is to hold him and walk around, which after like 20 twenty minutes, starts to put a strain on my body.  Last night was the worse.  I had him from 8 p.m. to 1 a.m., and I think he slept a total of a half hour during that time.  He kept doing that thing babies do where they fall asleep in your arms, and then the second you set them down they snap awake and start crying inconsolably.  So then you are left in the no-win situation of either letting them cry it out, which is incredibly stressful (what's worse than a wailing baby?), or picking them back up and starting the cycle anew.  And it would be one thing if they just let you hold them and sit on the couch, but Lil' S2 does not go for that.  He wants you carrying him and walking around while you do it.  Somehow the position that is most comfortable for you is inversely proportional to the position that is most comfortable for him.

Well, if there is any consolation, it is that I get to listen to a lot of podcasts.  The podcast is, in my opinion, the greatest innovation of the "smartphone era."  I listen to several hours of podcasts everyday.  I don't know how I did mundane activities before them.  Seriously, how did I get any chores done pre-2010?  Was I just bored all the time?  The newest one I started listening to is called You Must Remember This.  The podcast is about early Hollywood, a subject I don't know if I would be generally interested in, but there is a 12-episode series on Charlie Manson that is just riveting.  It's the most intriguing podcast I've heard since Serial, and it might even be better than Serial, because it's more of an "experience."  Sarah Koenig narrates the events of Serial in a very Ira-Glass-esque, half-reporter, half-understated-storyteller type of way, which makes sense (she used to be a reporter and Ira Glass is her boss), and it works for her, but that style is honestly a bit played out.  I think because This American Life is so successful, too many budding podcasters have copied its format and style, so now, through no fault of its own, it's kinda tired.  (Though I still very much enjoy it.)  It's like when a really good song gets played on the radio too much, you get sick of it, even though it is still a really good song.  (Hey ya ... Hey ya ... Shake it ... shake it ... shake it like a Polaroid picture ...)

You Must Remember This, on the other hand, is much more -- I don't know what the right adjective is -- edgy?  gritty?  spooky?   Whatever it is, I love listening to it.  Karina Longworth, the narrator and creator, does a fantastic job with it.  It helps, of course, that the Manson story is so fucked up and intriguing on its own, it doesn't really matter who is telling it, but Longworth's vibe and storytelling definitely add to the experience.  One thing I didn't know about the Manson story is how involved Candice Bergen was in the whole thing -- indirectly, through her ex-boyfriend Terry Melcher -- but still...  It's weird to hear all this stuff about Bergen, as I don't have any recollection of her pre-1988, so the whole time I'm listening to it all and thinking: "Murphy Brown?"

OK, baby is awake.  Gotta go.

Until next time ...

Entry 302: The Angels and The Archies

I was in the grocery store the other day, and the song "My Boyfriend's Back" came on the radio.  I have a strong affinity for bubblegum oldies (I'm a sucker for feel-good pop, in general), so I was really enjoying it while I was shopping.  But then I started listening closely to the lyrics and thinking about what they actually mean, and I came to the conclusion that it is actually an incredibly fucked up song.

The gist of the song is that there is a girl, presumably about high-school age, whose boyfriend went out of town, and while he was gone a different guy started harassing this girl by making unwelcome advances toward her, implicitly of a sexual nature ("He knows what you've been tryin'"), and by spreading rumors that she had accepted such advances ("He knows that you've been lyin'").  But now everything is going to change, because this girl's boyfriend is back, and he is going to beat the living shit out of her harasser ("Now you're gonna get a beatin'") unless he leaves town ASAP ("When you see him comin', better cut out on the double").



So many things wrong with this song, but let's start with the fact that it's an accepted premise that the only way this girl can stop this creep from bothering her is by having a boyfriend who can protector her.  What if she was single?  Then it would be OK?  And why did she even have to put up with it while her boyfriend was away?   What kind of moral is that?  Why didn't she stick up for herself?  This certainly isn't a very empowering message to send to little girls.  The song shouldn't be "My Boyfriend's Back," it should be "My Restraining Order's Filed".

My restraining order's filed, and you're gonna rue the day 

[Hey-la, hey-la, my restraining order's filed] 

Now you have to stay at least 100 yards away 

[Hey-la, hey-la, my restraining order's filed]

Another glaring problem with the song is that her boyfriend being able to beat up her harasser is a crucial part of her being "saved."  What if her boyfriend is physically weak or has cerebral palsy or is a pacifist or something like that?  "Sorry, babe, this guy is bigger and stronger than me.  You're just going to have to live with his harassment.  Nothing anybody can do about it."

And then the final problem is the fact that society was actually siding with, or at least believing, the harasser until this girl's boyfriend came back.  ("My boyfriend's back, he's gonna save my reputation.")  Again, if this girl was single, then she would just to have accept some cad slandering her good name?  Again, what kind of message is that sending?  They really need to update this song with lyrics that show a stronger female voice.

You're a big douche, you lie worse than Wikipedia 

[Aah-ooh, aah-ooh] 

And now I'm going to expose you on social media 

[Aah-ooh, aah-ooh] 

All your Facebook friends will see!

Well, maybe that's just how most songs were back then.  It was before sexism was bad.  I mean, listen to some of the songs from back in the day: "Baby, It's Cold Outside" is more than a little date rape-y, and "Young Girl" is beyond creepy.  Or maybe it's what happens when three middle-aged Jewish men write a song for a group young women.  The song is performed by a group called The Angels, but it is written by men named Feldman, Goldstein, and Gottehrer.  

The Angels were one of the myriad bubblegum groups that had one big hit, and then sort of dissolved into the pop aether.  My favorite of such bands is most definitely The Archies.  The Archies are a fictional band from Archie Comics, but they produced a real single "Sugar, Sugar" that is actually a really good song.  (It was performed by studio musicians, with a guy named Ron Dante on vocals.)  I love this song.  

Part of this is that I used to read Archie Comics all the time.  Everybody in my family did.  We used to have bookshelves full of them, and if you opened a drawer in one of our bathrooms, you were bound to come across four of five of them stuffed in there.  I'm not sure why we liked them -- they're not funny or interesting -- but we did.  I can't even remember what they were about really, and I must have read at least 100 of them, which should tell you something.  

I do, however, remember the basics: a high school kid named Archie was in a love triangle with two girls, Veronica (the snobby, rich vixen) and Betty (the down-to-earth girl-next-door); he had a buddy named Jughead Jones, who wore a crown for some reason, and whose entire raison d'être was eating hamburgers; and also there was a kid named Reggie, who was Archie's frenemy and the source of much conflict, particularly with Veronica.  And then there were a lot of other ancillary characters -- Big Moose, Dilton Doiley, Mr. Weatherbee, Ethel, Mr. Lodge, Pop Tate, Hot Dog (Jughead's dog), Professor Flutesnoot, Mrs. Grundy, Coach Kleats, Chuck (the token black guy, who had a black girlfriend, Nancy, I think), and ... that's all I can think of off-hand.  They all lived in a place called Riverdale, which is a lot like Springfield on The Simpsons, if The Simpsons was a really campy, wholesome, faux all-American cartoon that isn't at all funny.  And also if its characters said things like "egads!" and drank chocolate malteds at the soda shop.

Oh, also, Archie had several spin-offs.  I think Sabrina the Teenage Witch was a part of Archie Comics (indeed), as was Josie and the Pussycats.

Anyway, in doing the "research" for this post, I came across the official video of "Sugar, Sugar," and I encourage you all to watch it.  It really is a thing of beauty.  For one thing, the song itself is fantastic.  In my opinion, it's a perfect bubblegum pop song.  And then the video ... Well, it's pretty spectacular too.  I showed it to Lil' S1, and he loved it.  I think he is the perfect audience for it.  It seems to be trying to appeal to little kids.  Either that or it is for adults high on mescaline.  I'm not sure which.  

Entry 301: Shame, Shame

Before we had kids, when S was pregnant, the most annoying thing people who were already parents used to tell us was, "You have no idea how much this is going to change your life!"  Now that I am a parent, I can confirm that this is indeed annoying, and will try to never do it to any soon-to-be parents I might encounter.  In general, I don't like how parents often act (especially toward non-parents) as if they are part of an exclusive club, when in actuality -- like, what? -- two billion people have kids.

With that said, there are definitely a few things about having children that are very difficult -- the extent to which you just don't truly get as a kid-less individual.  Sleep deprivation is the biggest one.  Everybody warns you about it, but unless you actually experience it, you don't really get how awful it is.  Tending to a sick child is another one.  It's terrible.  For one thing, if you and your spouse both work, then it means somebody has to stay home.  It destroys your routine, and often times deciding who is going to be the one to call in sick leads to the dreaded I-do-more-work-than-you fight to which no set of parents is immune.  For another thing, sick kids are fussy as hell!  It is a double whammy of suckitude.

I bring this up, of course, because Lil' S1 came down with a vicious fever a few nights ago.  It peaked at 104.3, and we were on the verge of taking him to the hospital, but the Children's Tylenol we gave him brought it down to the hot-but-not-dangerously-hot 101.5.  We had to page the doctor at like 12:30 in the morning, which is never fun, and it caused a mini fight, because I told the person running the answering service that the issue was "a really high fever," instead of specifying the exact temperature, to underscore the urgency, as S said I should have done.  I'm chalking this one up to exhaustion from both parties.

[In honor of Lil' S1 having a fever, I present to you Foreigner's "Hot Blooded" -- one of the greatest bad-lyric songs of all-time.  "I'm hot-blooded, check it and see.  I got a fever of 103.  Come on baby, do you do more than dance?  I'm hot blooded, I'm hot blooded."  I mean, c'mon ladies, who isn't turned on by acute illness?]

Anyway, he is doing a little better now, but he is still cranky and enervated (I tried taking him to his first soccer practice today, and he just stood there and cried for five minutes, so we went home), and we had to keep him out of school Thursday and Friday.  Luckily, S is not working right now, so nobody had to miss work (I'm really short on leave until next year).  Unluckily, she has another kid -- a baby -- to take care of during the day as well.  Luckily, her mom is around to help out.  Unluckily, there are things her mom can't do (like nurse Lil' S2), and Lil' S1 goes into full-on "mamma's boy mode" when he's sick and most the time wants nothing to do with his Ava.  So it is really taxing on S, which in turn makes it taxing on me, because as soon as I get home, I get a sick toddler dumped on me, and then once I get him to bed, I get the baby handed to me, so that S and her mom can sleep uninterrupted for a few hours.  Once I get the baby to sleep, usually around 9:30 pm or so, it is the highlight of my day.  I have a few hours to myself.

Of course, I'm usually too tired to fully appreciate it.  I'm certainly too tired to do any physical activity, which is unfortunate, because I can feel myself slowly descending into an unhealthily stagnant lifestyle.  I sit at a desk or in a car all day, and then sit on the couch all night.  I'm trying to move more during the day, but it is difficult when your coworkers are expecting you to, you know, get your work done.  It also doesn't help that S and I do not see eye-to-eye when it comes to exercise.  She sees it as more of a luxury -- something you do in your leisure time, if you have any.  I see it more as a life-maintenance thing.  To me, it's like brushing your teeth: You can get away with not doing it for a while, but if you put it off everyday, there are going to be adverse consequences down the road.  It really needs to be part of your regular routine.

Anyway, speaking of exercise, I wanted to weigh in on the "Dear Fat People" brouhaha.  I don't think the video is very funny.  It's got a couple good jokes in it (I chuckled at "meth shaming"), but for the most part it's just a screed against overweight people; she apparently forgot that "insult comedy" is still supposed to be comedy.  With that said, I absolutely hate how much grief she is getting from everybody.  I mean, c'mon, she's a comedian, not a nutritionist.  She's trying to make people laugh, not running a Weight Watchers group.  If you (like me) don't think it's funny, then turn it off, forget about it, and get on with your damn life.  You really want to waste you time and emotional energy being offended by a sub-D-list comedian?  If Donald Trump says something offensive about Mexican immigrants, it matters because he is running for president and could (God forbid) someday have influence over immigration policy.  If a hyperactive chick with a video blog makes an offensive, (wannabe) humor video about fat people, it matters because ...?  And it is also the case that her haters are the ones making her popular.  I never would have heard of her or her video, if somebody didn't link to a story chastising her on Facebook.

By the way, lest you think I'm OK with fat shaming, I'm not.  I do think that sometimes we enable obese people in ways we never would with other people partaking in self-destructive behavior.  (My example is a really obese acquaintance, who loves making and eating baked goods.  We all just eat her delicious desserts with her.  But if she was an alcoholic, who brewed her own beer, nobody would feel comfortable drinking it with her.)  Fat shaming is incredibly mean, which maybe I would be okay with, in a "tough love" sort of way, if it actually worked.  But I don't think it does.  Just as you don't reform drug addicts by making them criminals, you don't reform people's eating habits by insulting them.  Not only does shaming not work, it might actually make things worse because it makes people feel bad about themselves, which drives them even more toward the comfort of their vice.

In general, anytime anybody justifies shaming by claiming it is "tough love" and that they are reforming unhealthy behavioral, you can pretty much call BS.  It seems to me shaming is usually not even about the shamee it is all about the shamer.  They are projecting their own insecurities -- or, in the case of "Dear Fat People," they are trying and failing, to be funny.

OK, time for me to go.  I gotta go for a run.  I got a few pounds to shed.

Until next time...

Entry 300: A Crossword Puzzle Constructor Posts Mean Comments

My tenth crossword puzzle to appear in The New York Times ran today.  It is a low-count, themeless puzzle, which means that it is not for the crossword puzzle solving novice.  But, I think, it is a pretty good puzzle with a few answers that you might not expect to see in a mainstream publication like NYT.  You should check it out, if you are so inclined.  

(And if you are, then I suggest you stop reading this now and come back to it later, because what follows contains spoilers.)

I wrote a little bit about it here (again, spoilers).  And you can read a review of the puzzle here.  But I thought it would be fun to post a few comments from the haters and respond to them.  I'm doing it here, instead of a more "public" forum, because I really don't want to waste my time with a petty back-and-forth online, which is often what these types of things turn into.  And also because I don't want to come off as thin-skinned.  I'm not.  I really don't care about comments like this because: (1) I'm just not particularly sensitive to criticism (or in this case insults) in general; (2) Other people said nice things about it; (3) When somebody starts getting rant-y, their comments lose validity, because it becomes more about them (is this a moment of catharsis?) than the work; (4) My puzzle was published in The New York Times.  I already "won."  People you don't know hating on your work is not necessarily a bad thing; it is much better than people you don't know having no idea about your work.

So, without further ado:

This was the worst piece of crap trying to pass itself off as a Saturday NYT puzzle I have ever seen. How are A BALL crossing A BEAT, then A LUI, A GHA, A OUT, SAGER crossing RAVER, and RAS, RES, HTS, STES, CERF, CBER etc. fit to print? IJSSEL is easily inferrable, right? OH, COME ON now! Exactly half of all entries are shortz (3 and 4 letters). The boatload of obscure proper-name trivia plus BLAXPLOITATION and BICURIOUS did nothing to improve things, instead they pulled the puzzle further down into the gutter, which even LILLIAN HELLMAN couldn't prevent. A new low in NYT crosswords in my 45-year solving experience. 

For a good workout, try Stan Newman's Saturday Stumper instead. 

Enjoy your weekend.

  And one more:

Usually I find your reviews spot on, Rex, but calling this POS today a great puzzle makes me scratch my head and wonder if I have any idea what a puzzle is supposed to be. Too many obscure clues with zero chance anyone "normal" would be able to figure them out without Google. If you did, great...my hat is off to you. But I'm a mere mortal and I have to say GALBA (one of four emperors in a single year??), CHRISTIANMINGLE, FAUXFUR (hey veganism is about food, not garments), an unheard-of Lillian Hellman work, and some minor league hockey team in Knoxvile?? This is crap, pure and simple.

It took a truly awful puzzle for me to finally post a comment. Hope I don't have to again.

I like how the first commenter writes "A GHA" and "A OUT," when in fact the words are agha (a Mideast chieftain) and Aout (the French word for August).  Apparently words starting with 'A' are no good?

The second one does something I see often, which is thinking something is obscure because you, personally, doesn't know it.  Since he doesn't know Galba or the Lillian Hellman play (Toys in the Attic), he assumes nobody "normal" knows it either.  In fact, Galba gets nearly 600K hits on Google, which means somebody normal has heard of him, and Toys in the Attic was one Hellman's biggest Broadway successes (according to Wikipedia, anyway).  

Lastly, he clearly does not know what a vegan is if he thinks it is only about food.  Being friends with many a vegan, I know that it is about abstaining from animal products in general.  So I too hope this guy doesn't "have" to post again.  It's embarrassing for everybody.

OK, that's all I got today.  Until next time...

Entry 299: System Dad

There is a nebulously defined term in football "system quarterback."  It's supposed to mean a quarterback who is not that good, but who succeeds anyway because the system he is in makes him look better than he really is.  It's really a dumb phrase (as many sports phrases are), because everybody who ever succeeds at anything is a "system [that thing]."  Nobody succeeds outside of their environment.  Nobody exists outside of their environment.

That's one of the fundamental flaws of neo-libertarian conservatism.  People who support a laissez-faire "winners and losers" society, guided by unbridled competition and the invisible hand of the free market, act as if everybody is born to nearly equal opportunities and "winning" is almost entirely a function of personal virtue.  When in fact, evidence suggests the exact opposite.  For the most part, you are what your parents were.  As an example, you should read this piece about Donald Trump's fortune.  But if you don't, here is the gist: All of Donald Trump's money came from his father.  Over the past 35 years, he has been a subpar investor, and has probably lost money compared to the market.  That is, if he just put his money into a typical 401(k) and ignored it (like the vast majority of the U.S. workforce), he would be even richer than he is today.  My brother posted this story on Facebook, and I replied with what I thought was a pretty good quip: Donald Trump was born on third base, ran back to second, and brags about how he hit a double.

But I digress ...

Things have more or less settled in over here at the G & G household.  We've got our system down, which, I suppose, makes me a "system dad."  I typically go to work, come home about 6:30 p.m., do a quick bit of yoga (if I'm lucky) and eat dinner.  Then I'm on Lil' S1 duty until he goes to bed around 8:30 (he's been better with bedtime of late).  Then I switch off to Lil' S2 duty to give S and her mom a contiguous block of uninterrupted sleep.  I usually pass him off at around 1:00 a.m., and then I sleep until about 7:30 a.m.  I wake up and get Lil' S1 off to school on my way to work.  Lather, rinse, repeat.

It's not a bad routine.  I don't have to wake up in the middle of the night, which is nice, but I have very little free-time.  By the time I get Lil' S2 to sleep, I usually have just few hours to cram in all the things that I really want to do.  But maybe I should just be grateful* for those few hours.  I have several advantages many others raising kids don't have -- namely a mother in-law who is an enormous help, letting S sleep when she needs it (which in turn allows me to sleep at night) and cooking almost every meal for us.  Also, we have enough money to, say, hire house-cleaners to come once a month.  Since we both work, finances are not super stressful for us.  I definitely do not take things like this for granted.

On the other side of the coin, I have one major disadvantage: Lil' S1.  People ask how he's doing with the new addition, and my standard response is, "He's a pain in my ass, but it has nothing to do with his little brother.  He was like that before S even got pregnant."  I wouldn't change Lil' S1 for anything; I like the way he is, but he's a lot of work.  He has three main modes -- bouncing off the walls, incessant whining (actually, I would change this about him, if I could), or staring at the iPod like a zombie.  There is another mode -- thoughtful, play-quietly or listen-to-a-story mode, but it never lasts long.  Usually we can coax him into it at the end of the night when he's tired.

By the way, quick aside, I read Lil' S1 a few stories every night before he goes to bed, and I find myself constantly changing the content on the fly because what is actually on the page is not really appropriate.  For example, Bambi is fraught with veiled sexism (Faline needs Bambi to come save her more than once), and Jack and the Beanstalk has some awful messages.  Jack trades his mother's cow for so-called magic beans and is rewarded when the magic works (bad message number one).  Then he goes into the giant's house without permission (bad message number two).  Then the giant categorizes him by his ethnicity and uses the term "Englishman" in a implicitly pejorative way (bad message number three).  Then Jack steals the giant's goose and his flute (bad message number four).  And then Jack's mother chops down the beanstalk, killing the giant (bad message number five).  And then Jack and his mother live happily ever after on their stolen riches (bad message number six).  I'm not trying to raise Lil' S1 to be a member of the PC Police or anything like that, but, damn, how I am supposed to read him a story in which the protagonists are blatant thieves and murderers?

[If one of my kids ever trades our cow for "magic" beans, he will absolutely be sent to bed without supper.]

Anyway, getting back to Lil' S1 and what a handful he can be, this is how I woke up this morning:  He burst into my room, shouted "wake up, Daddy!" at top of his lungs, climbed onto the bed, stood on top of me, cannonballed onto the bed next to me, rolled over on top me, and started slapping my exposed belly.  That is -- literally -- how I woke up this morning.  Thankfully it was already 9:15 a.m. (S let me sleep in a bit), and also thankfully S's sister is in town, and she took him to the park shortly thereafter, giving me a chance to write this post.  So, you know, it's just like Billy Shears says "I get by with a little help from my friends" -- or in this case family.



So the last thing I want to touch on, Kim Davis, that asshole clerk in Rowan County, Kentucky who has become a celebrity by refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples, has been arrested and placed in jail.  Two points on this: 1) If she was a radical Muslim refusing to issue marriage licenses to non-Muslims, under the rationale that it violates her religion to aid the unions of infidels, I doubt the "religious freedom" warriors like Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz would be defending her; 2) I've read a lot of comments on social media about how this is what she wants, because it makes her a martyr, to which I say, "good."  She gets what she wants, gay couples in her county get what they want, and the rest of us can get on with our damn lives.  Sound like win, win, win to me.  And if she really is motivated by martyrdom, I think she's going to get to a rude awakening in a few months when nobody on either side of the debate gives a rip about her anymore.  This woman lives in America after all, we don't have long attention spans here; her 15 minutes are nearly up.

Ok, that's all I got.  Until next time ...

*Grateful is an odd word, isn't it?  Full of grate?  It seems like it should be greatful.