Entry 404: No Moore

Well, Roy Moore is not going to be a US Senator.  That's a very good thing, although the election itself is a glass-half-full-or-half-empty type of thing.  On the one hand, a Democrat, and seemingly decent human being, won in a state where Republicans usually win by 20 points; on the other hand, the candidate most unfit for public office in my lifetime (yes, even more unfit than Trump) came within a sliver of winning.  That anybody voted for an alleged pederast, who said homosexuality should be illegal, Muslims shouldn't be allowed to serve in the US government, and our country was at its best when slavery was the law of the land is highly disturbing, let alone 48% percent of the electorate.

But win he didn't and the political ramifications are not small.  I'm dubious of claims about "momentum" and "waves," but it certainly does seem like Democrats are more motivated to turn out the vote than I've ever seen them before, save for Obama's presidential victories.  Susan Sarandon was widely mocked by liberals for proclaiming before the 2016 elections that a Trump victory might be a good thing because it would incite revolution.  But could she actually have been right?  No, of course not -- it's still an idiotic thing to say.  I wish Clinton had won a million times over.

With that said, if the Democrats can retake the House and/or the Senate in 2018 due to a massive anti-Trump backlash, it would be more than a mere consolation prize.  It would give the resistance actual power -- especially if they take the Senate.  Some of those Supreme Court justices are getting up there in years and having blocking power over Trump would be huge.  One of my fantasies is that Dems win a Senate majority in 2018 and then multiple openings on the Supreme Court open up (let's say people retire; I don't want to wish death on anybody), and then when Trump nominates somebody, Dems give him the Merrick Garland treatment, and then in 2021, newly-elected president Kirsten Gillibrand picks a couple of young, gay, transgender, racially ambiguous, atheist, liberal judges to fill the openings.

That's unlikely, sure, but it's much likelier now that the Dems won a seat in Ala-freakin'-bama!  The way things set up, if they hold all their Senate seats in 2018 and pick-off Nevada and Arizona, definite possibilities, they would have a 51-49 advantage.  Preliminary odds of this happening are right around 50-50 according to a comment I read from somebody at FiveThirtyEight.  I guess other states are in play as well as long shots -- maybe Texas or Tennessee -- but there's also a chance Dems lose a seat they currently hold.  You have to consider that as well.  This is where Franken's happy hands hurt his party.  I don't believe he was up for reelection until 2020.  Now, there is going to be an election in Minnesota, a purple state, in 2018.

And the House is wide-open as I understand it.  I haven't actually crunched the numbers myself or even read a comprehensive analysis on it, but I've heard smart people say that if Dems hold their seats and win in places carried by Clinton, they will win a House majority.  That seems very doable, if -- and this is a big if -- they can turnout voters like they did in Virginia and Alabama.  Everybody needs to be energized and do something for the cause -- volunteer or donate.  Most people have either money or time to spare, some lucky people have both.  Most people in this country are closer to Doug Jones than they are to Roy Moore.  We just need to get those most people to vote.  So, let's do it!

Okay, I'm off my political soapbox...

This will likely be my last entry on this blog for a few weeks or so.  We are headed on vacation for the holidays -- Christmas at the beach!  I'm looking forward to it.  Not Hawaii (the South Carolina coast) so the song below isn't apt, but I like it anyway, so I'm posting.  I gotta say, I can't enough Bing Crosby (Tacoma's own!) come the yuletide season.



Until next time...

Entry 403: The "E" is for Entertainment

Just got back from a birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese's.  I can't tell if that place has really gone down hill or if I'm romanticizing my childhood experiences there.  I remember it being a mecca of fun and excitement -- it was the place to have a birthday.  (Unless you were my friend who insisted the short-lived ShowBiz Pizza was far, far superior to Chuck E. Cheese's.)  Now, I find the place kinda depressing.  I joked on Facebook that it's a casino for kids, but that's really what its like.  They used to have tubes and nets and pits, so that kids could run and jump and climb, but at the handful of locations I've been to relative recently these funplex type of toys are gone (or drastically scaled back), and it's just all arcade games.  And a lot of them aren't even typical video games; they are literally gaming machines where you feed in money trying to get tickets to redeem for prizes.  And "redeem" is a very generous term -- "get swindled" is more accurate.  We played games for about an hour and earned 26 tickets, which got us two tootsie rolls (the medium sized ones) and four stickers -- and that's only because the worker behind the counter let us round up to 30.  The last time I was there a woman said to me, "I like this because it teaches kids they have to save up if they want to by something.  It's a good lesson," to which I replied, "the only lesson I hope my sons take away from this is what a ripoff these types of places are."  I got a big laugh out of her friend.

Now, I can't be too curmudgeonly.  It was a birthday party, at which we were guests, and the entire bill was footed by the hosts -- we even got a prepaid game card -- so I'm very appreciative we got to go.  I just don't love Chuck E. Cheese's is all.  It definitely was nice to have an activity for the kids though.  S had to go to Côte d'Ivoire for work, so I have both kids by myself for a week.  During the work week it's not too bad (other than my evening commute is worse and I miss my Krav Maga classes), but on the weekend it can get tough to entertain them, so knocking out a few hours with something is always welcome.

The party was a fine little party too.  It was for a kid at Lil' S1's new school, and I didn't even know him or his parents.  So, I got to meet them which was nice.  Although, another problem with Chuck E. Cheese's is that the kids are all off in their own separate worlds playing games, and I had to keep close tabs on Lil' S2, so there wasn't much chance to congregate.  I didn't get more than, like, ten minutes to talk with the grown-ups.  Whatever, though, like I said, it's nice that Lil' S1 is making friends (another parent told me her son was a "fan" of his, which I thought was sweet); I'm thankful we were invited (and they let Lil' S2 tag along, as well).  Plus, the kids seemed to enjoy it (it's pizza, cake, and video games, after all), and they didn't throw a fit when it was time to leave, even though we left on the early side because I didn't want Lil' S2 to go down for his nap too late.

Speaking of which, he's been doing pretty well without a paci.  He hasn't asked for one in a week or so.  But it's just harder to get him down now.  The paci triggered something in his brain that would make him fall asleep.  Now, you have to lay down in bed with him for 15 minutes, pretending to be asleep yourself, as he babbles nonsense (which is super cute, even given the circumstances) and drives a toy truck around his mattress.  When you are counting on that nap time to do things it's difficult to do while he's up, then that 15 minutes is a big deal.  Oh well, it could be worse.  He could not nap at all.  I'm not looking forward to that day.

Well, gotta go -- work tomorrow and whatnot.  I didn't even have time to get to any "real" problems like the decline of our country into outright kleptocracy.  Well, I'm sure I'll have more to say on that another time.

Until next time...

(PS -- I started this entry in the afternoon and finished it in the evening, in case you were wondering why I said I just got back from Chuck E. Cheese's at the beginning of it and then mentioned having to work tomorrow at the end.  I doubt anybody was reading it that closely, but if you were, that's the explanation.)

Entry 402: A Holiday Without Pacifiers

Holiday!  Celebrate!  It's almost over, but not yet.  A few more hours -- don't short change me!  It's been good, but the thing about holidays is that they usually mean less time to relax for me.  During a normal workday, I can take fifteen minutes off here and there to listen to a podcast or do a crossword puzzle; during a holiday I can't because I have two little kids literally jumping all over me.  Usually during Lil' S1's nap we let Lil' S2 watch the iPad so that we can have some peace and quiet, but even those moments have been stress-filled the past few days because we are trying to get Lil' S2 off the pacifier.  It's been rough.  That thing was such an amazing crutch.  He would be bawling and screaming and refusing to go to sleep, and then we would pop a paci in his mouth, and he would instantly go down.  It was unbelievable.

But they gotta go at some point -- or so everybody says.  It's unclear to me what exactly the problem is with pacifiers.  If he loves them so much, and they work so well, why not keep using them?  He's only two -- it's not like he's 12.  What the big deal?  This is one of those things where you feel compelled to do something because everybody else is doing it.  There's a stigma associated with pacifiers once a kid gets past, like, a year old, and I don't really understand why.  Our daycare hates them.  I asked the director why once, and she said it's because they screws up kids' teeth.  Okay, but they're going to lose those teeth anyway, and the way we used a paci for Lil' S2 was to give it to him right bed or a nap, let him fall asleep and then take it out of his mouth.  It's hard for me to see how this could do much orthodontic damage.

[If there is one premise that will never get old, it's somebody who looks like Vin Diesel trying to be a nanny.  Look at how strong he is -- he must be clueless about taking care of kids!]

S is much more prone to the everybody-is-doing-it peer pressure than I am.  A lot of it I just go along with because I don't want to argue about it.  Another example: She became fixated on getting our kids to not drink out of sippy cups.  This one I did actually push back on.  The thing is, they only use sippy cups for milk, and it's entirely a matter or practicality -- if they drink out of a normal cup they inevitably spill little drops of their beverage all over the place.  With water this isn't such a big deal, with milk it is.  Lids just make sense.  Adults use lids all the time.  What's a coffee cup you get at Starbucks but a paper sippy cup?

I think I "won" this battle, as she has recently reverted back to using sippy cups and hasn't said anything about it.  It's tough, though, S takes differences of opinions on these types of things very personally.  Anything slightly critical is perceived as a harsh rebuke of her entire parenting philosophy.  Now, to be fair, the mother is always unfairly judged way more harshly than the father when it comes to such matters.  But also S is just sensitive -- it's part of her personality.  Several times she's come home upset over something somebody said at work, and when she tells me about it, it sounds like a pretty standard, impersonal bit of work criticism.  I'm probably the worst person to talk to about it, also, because I'm not great at "hand holding" and comfort, which is all she wants in venting to me.  It's one of those ongoing struggles that's a part of any relationship.

In other news...

We had some people over for Thanksgiving, and it turned out to be really nice.  We use to go to S's parents for the holiday, but recently we've done Xmas there instead.  Last year we were here, just the four of us, so I cooked a full-on Thanksgiving meal -- turkey, stuffing, potatoes, the whole nine yards -- and then S ate just a few pieces of the turkey and the kids just kinda picked at it, so I ended up cooking a feast for one.  This year, S's two good friends E and M hosted Thanksgiving at our place (they both live in small apartments), so I didn't have to cook at all, which was great.  The whole day was a ton of fun -- it was me, S, M, E, E's boyfriend (maybe?) A, M's friend L, our friend J, and then the two boys.  We even had a kids' table.

The only problem is that we way overdid it.  I know that that's kinda the point of the holiday, but we overdid it even by the standards of a typical gluttonous Thanksgiving.  For dessert we had two pumpkin pies, a sweet potato pie, a chocolate mousse cake, a cheesecake, flan, and ice cream.  This is for seven adults and two kids!  (And the kids would rather eat Starburst out of their Halloween stash, anyway.)  And nobody wanted to take the leftover desserts home (Damn, health-conscious friends!), so we got stuck with them all.  When the night was over, I took a look at everything, and said to S, "What the hell are we going to do with this?  We have enough dessert to fill a diner display case!"  We just chucked it.  We saved one untouched pumpkin pie and tossed the rest.  I felt super guilty about it -- I hate wasting food -- but it's not like you can donate half-eaten flan to a food bank.  It's a bit irrational too because nobody needs pie to live.  Those are empty calories, so it doesn't really matter if we dump them in the trash or I dump them down my gullet -- except in the latter case those wasted calories would be attaching themselves to my belly.  So, from an overall utility standpoint, throwing them away is probably the right move, but it still doesn't feel right to be so wasteful.

[Believe it or not, I think Thursday was the first time I've ever had sweet potato pie.  Actually, that's very believable considering I'm a white guy who grew up about as far from The South as you can possible get and still be in the contiguous United States]

The problem, of course, is that people feel compelled to bring something for everybody, and desserts are a relatively easy, popular choice.  S and I agreed that if we do this again next year, we are going to be more organized about what people bring and more adamant about what people don't bring.  If people want to bring extra, they can bring something that won't go bad -- wine is always a nice option.

Speaking of wine, maybe I will treat myself to a glass.  I think we have an open bottle of red that I wouldn't want to go to waste.  I had better get on that.

Until next time...

Entry 401: The Franken Conundrum

Al Franken is probably my favorite officeholder of all time.  I love his politics; I love his humor; and I loved his public persona.  He seemed like a genuinely good dude.  Well, maybe not -- or at least maybe it's more complicated.  In light of the recent allegations that he groped and sexual harassed member of the military model Leeann Tweeden while they were both on the same USO Tour, I posted on Twitter and Facebook yesterday that I thought he should go.  Now, after reading scores of articles on the matter, including many written by thoughtful women, I'm not so sure.  I'm still leaning that way, but if he doesn't, I'm honestly not going to be that outraged.


Here's what I think...

The reason my initial response was for him to step down was twofold:

(1) Several of my female friends whose opinions I respect were saying he should step down.

(2) If you're going to call out sexual misconduct, you have to do it even against people you like.  That's what it means to be against something.  You have a woman, who seems credible, saying she was assaulted by Franken, and then you have a picture of him either groping her or pretending to grope her (it's tough to tell if he's actually touching her and she's wearing a big flak jacket) while she's sleeping.  Put those two things together, and he probably did something untoward.  Was it the worst thing in the world?  Of course not.  It's not even close to what Roy Moore (allegedly) did or what Donald Trump (allegedly) did.  But it seems perfectly reasonable to me to say -- if you physically violate a person in sexual manner, you shouldn't serve in public office, period.

But then again, there's this logic, which I find at least somewhat persuasive.  The idea, essentially, is that the vast majority of powerful men have done something as bad Franken in the past, on both sides of the political aisle.  But if Democrats are the only party who calls on members to resign over something this, which, given how the Alabama GOP and voters are treating Roy Moore, seems to be the case, then it can be weaponized by the alt-right.  Start exposing Dems in red states, and then when their party forces them to step down, as is new the moral protocol, replace them with a Republican.  This, ironically, would only further hurt the very people you intended to protect (victims of harassment and women in general) because it would give more power to the more ruthless party, and they would enact all sorts of terrible legislation.

I follow the logic, and admit that is a concerning possibility, but I don't totally buy it.  For one thing, it's true that most Republicans don't hold their own accountable when it comes to sexual assault -- Trump never would have won if they did.  But that's one of the main reasons why I'm not a Republican.  Not being in a party of hypocrites and shady old fucks who live an alternate reality is important to me.  For another thing, the fear laid out by the author requires a very specific set of circumstances -- blue congressman in a red state with thinly veiled skeletons in his closet.  I'm not sure how many people there are who actually tick that box.

Also, saying somebody needs to go doesn't necessarily imply they need to go immediately without any thought of the consequences.  Somebody can be removed in a way and on a time-frame that minimizes the damage his vacancy will have on his constituents.  In Franken's case, I don't think it's hypocritical or a great compromise of liberal principles to argue that he should step down but not until the governor (a Democrat) chooses a suitable replacement.  And if it was the case that the governor was a Republican, then you could give him the boot after he finished his term.  And actually, this is more or less what the author of the article advocates for in Franken's case (along with him doing penance, which I agree he should do), but she's insistent that he not resign, lest he become a precedent.  But the precedent that should be set, as I said alluded to above, is transgressors will be removed in a way and on a time-frame that minimizes the damage their vacancies will have on the causes they support.  And, by the way, this cuts both ways: If Republicans can get rid of Roy Moore, in a legal and ethical manner, and hold onto their seat (like, say, via a write-in candidate), then they should do that.

Anyway, anytime stories like this break.  I immediately think of my own past.  (I've weirdly fantasized, in elaborate detail, about what I would do if I was ever falsely accused of a sexual misdeed.)  As to Roy Moore's behavior, I can immediately dismiss the notion, because I've certainly never done anything as fucked up as he did.  As to Al Franken's behavior, it requires more thought.  I feel fairly confident I've never forcibly kissed somebody who didn't want to kiss me back -- even as part of a misunderstanding.  That's just never been my way.  Honestly, I can't even remember a time I went for a kiss and got denied.  I think a combination of good judgement and a damn-near paralyzing fear of rejection kept me out of trouble.

As for the picture -- for groping a woman without permission -- I can't think of a time I've done something like that either.  But I've definitely seen friends do it -- often in the guise of a joke (as was the case with Franken), but it wasn't always received that way.  I have a good friend from college, sweetest guy in the world, who used to declare himself a member of the DGP -- Dick Grabbing Posse -- and then he would walk around parties and randomly grab guys' dicks, just to be silly.  Most the time he was among friends, so nobody cared, there was an implied consent.  But I definitely remember once he did it to one of my friends, who wasn't really friends with him, and my friend was like, "What the fuck?  Why is that guy grabbing my dick?"  And my response at the time was "Don't worry about it, man.  Mellow out.  Don't be such a homophobe."  But he wasn't being homophobic, at all.  He just didn't want somebody else touching his junk, which, obviously, is a very reasonable request.  I was wrong.  My dick-grabbing friend was wrong.

This is just one example, one person, but if I rack my brain, I could probably come up with many, many more.  In fact, another one just popped into my head.  I went to a New Year's Eve party once, and afterward several of my female friends came up to me and told me that another one of my friends kept trying to grope them on the sly.  I just said he was good guy, but maybe he got a little handsy when he was drunk.  In retrospect, I wish I would have confronted my friend and told him not to behave that way and tried to get him to apologize, but I didn't.

The thing is, though, the vast majority of my examples would come from a time when everybody was really young.  The DGP died out by the time we could legally drink; the New Year's Eve party was over 15 years ago.  Kids do stupid shit like that.  I'm not saying "boys will be boys"; I'm saying people under the age of 25 don't really know how to treat their peers, in general.  They're harsh to each other and do stupid shit.  They make bad decisions.  They have little impulse control.  But with a little luck they survive and grow up and act how adults should act.

That's one of the things that bothers me about Franken's photo -- he's like a 50-year-old man then.  He's not some dumbass 19-year-old.  He should have known better.  This is also one of the reason's Trump's "locker room talk" excuse was so weak.  Sure, it was locker room talk -- if you're an insecure high school student.

Anyway... fun stuff!  I gotta go.

Until next time...

Entry 400: That's Right, 400

Wow, 400 entries.  I've been regularly posting to this blog for over seven years now.  If you do the math, I've averaged a post every 6.5 to 7.0 days.  It's a little under a week because, although now I regularly post once a week (with the occasional skipped week), when I first started it (pre-kids), I posted twice a week and so that's reflected in the average.

It's been a positive exercise overall.  Sometimes it's a drag to write something, or I don't have any ideas or time.  But for the most part it's very nice to create something that I can look back on and smile about.  It's fun to go back and read old entries sometimes.  I remember things from the past that would literally be forgotten forever if they weren't written down.  It does feel a strange at times -- inefficient -- to put so much effort into something that so few people actually consume, but that's how it goes.  Not everybody can be David Sedaris, and I bet even David Sedaris has written thousands of words nobody has ever read or heard.  In my own publishing experience -- crossword puzzles, academic papers, guest articles at "real" blogs -- the ratio of time I spend working on things that will never see the light of day to things that will is embarrassingly high.  Or at least it would be if I let myself be embarrassed by it.  But I don't because it's a way to spend my leisure time -- and it's just as good as any other way.  If you derive satisfaction from the process, then it's never a waste of time.

Anyway, more news about sexual assault this week.  That's... good?  I dunno.  Certainly it's not good that men are sexual assaulting women (and other men), but it is good that it's coming out and (mostly) being condemned.  It appears to be one of those cultural waves that seemingly hits the public all at once with a tremendous force -- like how almost overnight gay marriage went from being a taboo, even among mainstream liberals, to being so widely accepted that you will be criticized (rightfully) as being a bigot if you don't accept it.  The public rose up and said "there's nothing wrong with gay people getting married" and now we seem to be saying "it's not okay to treat women the way we've been treating them."

Not everybody is on-board, of course.  Republicans, as you might expect, are loath to embrace this anti-harassment movement.  Oh, they are fine with it when it's a "liberal" doing the transgressing, but not when it's when of their own.  There are a shockingly (but not that shockingly, if you've been paying attention) high number of GOP members earnestly positing that a child molester is more fit for public office than a Democrat.  Sexual predation against a minor is not a deal-breaker.  Indeed you have people who think a 30-year-old man forcing a 14-year-old to feel his erect dick is not all that bad.  It's sick -- but that's today's GOP.  They are a sick party.  That's the harsh, sad reality.

And they've always been resistant to social changes.  In fact, it's really why they exist.  At the top, you have super rich people who want tax cuts and ideologues who want to dismantle the welfare state, but the base -- Trump's people -- are held together almost completely by social and racial grievance.  They see the country changing -- becoming less white, becoming more LGBT-friendly, becoming more multicultural, more wary of "family values", less accepting of traditional gender roles -- and they don't like it.  They could give a shit about public policy and foreign affairs.  They just want somebody in office who hates the same things and the same people they hate.  They want somebody who is on their side, fighting the wave of progressivism they feel is overcoming the country.  (And they are not necessarily wrong about this wave coming.  Where they err, in my opinion, is in thinking these changes are necessarily going to make their lives tangibly worse.)

I thought this was a good article about Trump supporters.  This has been my take on Trumpism from the beginning.  It's not really a con, as many people like to say.  I think a lot of Trumpies know he's full of shit.  They know he's making promises he can't keep.  They just don't care -- they might even like his lies, knowing full well they are in fact lies, because he's lying on their behalf and telling them what they want to hear.  His lies are part of the deal.  The deal being -- you support me and put me into power, and I will stick up for you.  I will insult the people you want me to insult.  I will normalize your bigotry and make you feel good about your racism.  That's the quid pro quo.

Now, to be clear, getting back to the problem of sexual assault, this is most definitely not something on which any part of the political spectrum has a monopoly.  You find it on the left, the right, the up and the down, the in and the out, and other dimensions we haven't even discovered yet.  The difference is how do people respond when it is revealed.  And right now the left is better at disowning its sexual abusers (see: Harvey Weinstein and Anthony Weiner).  Maybe if you go back to previous generations with Bill Clinton or the Kennedys, this wouldn't be the case, but we aren't in a previous generation at the moment.  Also, with respect to Clinton, other than the fact that he last ran for office before a decent chunk of the electorate was even born, he also was impeached and thoroughly investigated at the behest of his political enemies, and the worst that came out is that he lied about an infidelity with a consenting adult.  (With that said, I would have no problem with Democrats casting Slick Willy aside.)

Well, one thing that remains true after 400 entries: I always run out of time way before I think I will.

Until next time...

Entry 399: The True Meaning of Ague

Ague
1. A febrile condition in which there are alternating periods of chills, fever, and sweating. Used chiefly in reference to the fevers associated with malaria.
2. A chill or fit of shivering.

Ague is a word you know today if and only if you do crossword puzzles a lot.  But I got a taste of it firsthand earlier this week.  I came down with something awful Halloween night after taking the kids trick-or-treating.  I was so sick Wednesday I literally -- literally -- did not get out of bed all day but to use the bathroom a few times.  It was 6:00 pm before I even left my room to try to eat dinner at a table like a human being.  (I had some low-sodium, organic, fake-chicken noodle soup, which hit the spot perfectly because it was so bland.)  Thankfully S was around to help out and do double-duty with the kids, because I was in no condition to take care of them.  I don't know how single parents do it, or how I would have done it if S was away on one of her trips.  I guess you just suffer through it and do what you have to do, but it's hard to function with a fever of 103.


[This is one of the worst lyrical songs of all time.  "I'm hot blooded, check it and see, I got a fever of 103... I'm hot blooded... You don't have to read my mind, to know what I have in mind"  So, you're extremely ill, and that's supposed to be a turn on?]

That was the worst part -- the fever.  It was way up, and I struggled to bring it down.  I even thought about going to urgent care because I know it's really bad for your brain to be overheated for an extended period of time.  But I never got above 104 (peak was 102.7), which I read is the start of the "danger zone," and I was pretty sure it would break before too long.  It doesn't happen often, but I have been this sick before, and it follows the same pattern: I'm totally wiped out for one day, and then I'm "normal sick" for a few days, and then I'm more or less back to normal.  It seems as if the same thing is happening this time.  I'm currently in the normal sick stage -- I can get up and do things (like blog) but I'm definitely in no condition to, say, compete in a triple jump tournament.

[Kind of a weird event, don't you think?  Jumping is a very natural athletic competition, but why three in a row?]

Every time I get sick, I take for granted how good I have it when I just feel normal.  The saying "at least you have your health" is a cliché, but it's also true.  It's also nice to just zone out the world and not worry about anything but your own health for a day, even if it's because you are physically incapable of doing anything else.  And I missed quite a bit being out.  There was the attack in NYC, in which some deranged individual took out a bunch of people with his car, and more disturbing (to me, certainly not to most Americans) there was an incident in which somebody tried to do something similar in my neighborhood.  Around 3 am Halloween evening, some guy who lives down the street from me, apparently as part of a neighborly feud, tried to hit the woman who lives next to him with his career.  The details are fuzzy -- I'm getting all the information off our neighborhood Listserv -- but apparently she ended up being okay and the guy smashed into a bunch of parked cars.  (It also said there was a cyclist who was nearly hit, which seems very odd given the time of the incident.)

The guy got away, but the police know who he is and are looking for him, as I write this, so he will probably get caught soon.  Nonetheless, I wanted to find out exactly where this guy lives so that I could avoid his house in future, especially when I'm with my kids.  So, I walked down to the scene of the crime and there were two police officers hanging out there.  They asked me a few questions to see if I had any new information for them (I didn't).  Then they assured me they were going to get the guy.  It was nice to see a police presence still in the neighborhood, and according to the Listserv, they were there within minutes after being called, but the whole situation is still unnerving to say the least.

In other news...

The kids are doing pretty well.  Lil' S1 seems to be enjoying kindergarten at his new school, and Lil' S2 is starting to speak in (somewhat) coherent full sentences.  They do something different every day that makes me smile.  When we went out trick-or-treating, Lil' S2 was so adorable.  He would waddle up to the door in his little construction worker outfit and say his version of "trick of treat," which is more like "trit o' tree," but he said it so quietly nobody could actually hear him, and then he would just reach into the dish and grab a piece of candy.  If he grabbed more than one piece, he would put some of them back, without being told.  Somehow he knew he should only grab one.

As for Lil' S1, he did something that really made me proud.  It seems silly at first, but stay with me.  He watches this show Clifford's Puppy Days.  You know, the big red dog?  It's about him when he was small.  The theme song has a lyric, "I might be little, I might be stuck in the middle."  I was singing it because it was stuck in my head (of course), and Lil' S1 said, "it's not stuck in the middle, Daddy!"
"Yes, it is."
"No! It's not!  There's no middle to the whole world!"
"It's a saying."
"What's a saying?"
"It's just something people say.  It doesn't have to literally be something real."
"It's not stuck in the middle!"
"It is."
"No, it's not!"
At that point I let it go because as hard-headed as I am about acknowledging reality, I'm equally hard-headed about not causing a meltdown on the way to school.

I had forgotten about this when the next day, out of the blue, he comes up to me and says, "Daddy, I listened to the song, and you were right it is 'stuck in the middle.'  I'm sorry that I said it wasn't."  And that was my chest puffed!  He thought something was true that wasn't, sought out evidence to confirm it (he listened to the song more carefully), realized he was wrong, admitted it, revised his position, and apologized for it.  I've never been prouder.  Seriously.  If only our politicians had the integrity my five-year-old son.

Until next time...

Entry 398: Life Stuff

Lot's things going on here in the G & G household, none of them very exciting, which means they are perfect material for this blog.  We are getting a ton of work done on our house.  This is on the heels of getting a ton of work done to our yard this summer.  Some of it is just cosmetic stuff -- changing the blinds, touching up some bare paint, fixing a dent in the wall where Lil' S1 crashed a chair, and most importantly, getting rid of this damn dangling chandelier-like light fixture in our dining area that's good for nothing but whacking me in the head.  Some of it is important maintenance -- our furnace was leaking carbon monoxide (not enough to harm anybody, but enough to set off our detectors, and you don't mess around with CO), so we are getting it replaced (the workers are here as I write this, actually).  And that's our savings account drained down to nothing.  But I don't mind.  Improving where you live pretty much always seems like a good investment to me.  For one thing, you improve where you live.  For another thing, you can often get the money back (at least a decent portion of it), if/when you sell.

We are actually discussing doing some serious renovations -- like get-a-line-of-credit-for-a-couple-hundred-thousands-dollars renovations.  And by "discussing," I mean S is telling me she wants to do this, and I'm trying to find the best way to keep a happy marriage.  I don't really want to do renovations, to be honest.  It's too much money for too little payoff, and it doesn't seem to me as if we have the type of house for it structurally (although admittedly I know very little about architecture).  S wants three things: 1) a bigger kitchen, 2) a more open main area, 3) a room on the ground floor for her mom when she visits because she struggles going up and down stairs.  But it's like $300,000 to do 1 and 2 (3 might not be realistic), and I'm not convinced it would be that much better when it's done.  I mean, for that amount of money, we could buy a whole new house!

Except we couldn't.  Not anything decent; not anywhere near DC proper.  You have to go pretty far out in the suburbs, not even the suburbs, the suburbs of the suburbs to get a good house in a decent neighborhood for that price in this area.  We have been keeping a close eye on DC real estate (well, S has at least, and then she makes me look at it), but the market is just INSANE.  It's like $1 million for what we want, and you have to be ready to make an offer five minutes after you see it or somebody else is going to come in and snatch it.  And these places aren't even that great.  They are "yeah, okay, this could probably work" not "OMG!  This is my dream house!"  If we wanted to sell our house and move to a totally new place, now we would be a great time to do it.  But since we want to sell and buy in the same market, it doesn't really work to our advantage.

My feeling on the whole thing is that I'm open to moving, but I don't really want to do it (similar to renovations).  If a great deal presented itself, then I'd be all for it.  But we haven't seen anything close to a great deal yet.  So that being the case, I say we just stay here, don't pump a bunch of money into our place for a marginal upgrade, and live a happy life (or try to at least, it's hard to really be happy with Tangerine Idi Amin in the White House).

Unfortunately, the problem with having a family is that you have to consider what other people want as well.  And S doesn't like that plan, so we have to figure something out.  I think we might just end of moving next spring.  We will sell our house and then move into a rental for a while and then look for a new place.  I like that idea better than trying to do it simultaneously.  It's easier to work out the financing (you don't have to put a contingency on the sale, which many sellers around here won't agree to anyway, because somebody else will make an offer without one), and we won't feel rushed into buying a just okay house for an obscene amount of money.  Also, I ultimately would love to move somewhere else completely -- where?  I don't know.  But if we don't own a house, it's a lot easier to dream realistically about such scenarios.

But renovations are definitely still on the table.  We wouldn't have to buy a new house, and we would ultimately get to stay in the neighborhood, two big pluses for me (although we would still have to move out for a few months).  Renovations also have the upside that we have more control over what we want.  But they have the downside that we are limited to what the current structure of our house will allow and that there are somethings we still won't get even if we renovate -- like a parking space.

So some "fun" conversations are on the horizon for S and me.  Our marriage works because we, at a very macro level, agree on things -- we have similar values and we work really well as parental team.  We're happy as a family, which is probably the singularly most important thing.  But there are some big lifestyle issues on which we have never seen eye-to-eye.  We have different priorities and derive satisfaction from different things.  S always wants to be going, doing, moving someplace, something -- a new job, a better house, a better school so on and on -- onward and upward.  Whereas I just want to get to a place of adequate comfort and free time, so that I can do things that actually make life worthwhile -- you know, like crossword puzzles and blogging.

And, by the way, it should go without saying, but neither one of us is right or wrong.  We're just different.  That's something I think we could both stand to remember is moments of frustration.  S often chalks my attitude up to "not ever wanting to be bothered by anything" (as if moving to a new house is equivalent to running an errand), and I often dismiss S's opinions because I think she's just going to have new ones in a few weeks anyway.  I think she often wants to change things just for the sake change not because they get us closer to any sort of final goal.  But, even if this is the case (and it might not be) so what?  Why is that any less worthy a way to live life than any other way?

Anyway...

Well, my blogging period has elapsed.  Until next time...

Entry 397: Some Brief Thoughts On a Culture of Sexual Assault (I Should Have Done More)

Short entry this week.  We have a bunch of company this weekend, the in-laws and some family friends of the in-laws.  There are currently six adults and four kids staying in our house, so, as you can imagine, it's a bit hectic...

[Note: This entry ended up not being that short after all -- as usual.]

It has been interesting, to say the least, to watch this Harvey Weinstein story snowball into a much broader story about a culture of sexual harassment and sexual assault in general.  It seems as if this didn't really happen when the mainstream media started reporting on other predators, like, say, Bill Cosby.  I'm not sure why Weinstein seems to have resonated so much more with people.  Perhaps Weinstein's tactics were more in line with the type of unwanted sexual advances the typical woman receives on a regular basis.  Most women were never drugged and raped by "America's Grandpa," but many have been harassed in the workplace by men who had power over their careers.

As I mentioned previously, I was only vaguely aware of Weinstein before all this broke, and my opinion of him was already negative -- I thought he was the stereotypical asshole, bullying business executive (and he seems to have been that too).  I've been reading a lot of the stories about him, and I've been following the chorus of "me too"s on social media.  I've said almost nothing about it, and I haven't responded to any of my friends' posts.  It's way too easy to misunderstand somebody or be misunderstood when communicating in a series of texts and emojis, so I typically steer clear of serious issues on social media.  (On a related note, is this soon going to be a cop-out on my part?  Is discourse on social media going to take over to such an extent that saying "I don't want to talk about it on social media" is tantamount to saying "I don't want to talk about it all?"  A different topic, for a different time.)  Also, when you're not a member of the victimized group, when you are just an ally, you have to be careful not to "make it about you."  So, with that said, I know this subject is not about me.  But men do play a big part in it, and this blog is about me, and so I believe it's the appropriate place to give my thoughts on the subject.

My thoughts are very much in line with those of Quinten Tarantino.  I have read some criticism of Tarantino on this.  Many say it's too little, too late, which is one hundred percent fair, and it's basically what Tarantino himself says.  ("Anything I say now will sound like a crappy excuse.")  But his words really resonate with me, and I don't think I'm alone.  Only a very small percentage of the population is in a position to see firsthand somebody as rich and powerful as Weinstein in action, but I suspect the vast majority of men have known another man who very likely crossed a line with a woman in some way -- and we didn't do enough about it.

In my case, throughout my life I've had three woman tell me they've been raped, and each time my reaction was completely underwhelming.  I basically did nothing.

The first woman -- girl, actually -- was a high school friend.  She described the first time she had sex, with her boyfriend at the time, and it was not consensual.  I dismissed it at the time because she was still really close friends with the guy.  But, if what she told me was accurate (I think it was), and if my memory is correct (I think it is), then she was flat-out date raped.

The second woman was a college friend.  She openly said a different guy, who we all knew, raped her.  To my knowledge, nobody did anything about it.  (I don't even know if she did much about it.)  I did ask another friend about it once, and he said, "I don't think that's really what happened."  And so I just accepted that without further inquiry because it was easy -- that's probably not what happened.  I even saw the guy around a few times after that.  I always tried to avoid him, but even before this all went down, I thought he was a colossal asshole and tried to avoid him.

The third woman was a high school friend, who was visiting some other high school friends at my college, so we were all hanging out together.  We were playing the drinking game "I Never," where you say something you've never done and everybody who has done that has to drink (or something like that).  Because we were all young, drunk, and dumb somebody said "I've never been raped!" and my friend drank.  She didn't make an ostensibly big deal about it, but it was pretty clear she wanted people to notice.  I did, and I didn't do anything about it.

That's the point: I didn't anything about any of them.  Maybe it wasn't my place to do anything, but I could have asked -- could have, but didn't.  My attitude was somewhere between denial and "somebody else other than me should be handling this."  And that's not good enough.

One through line of all these incidents is that they happened when I was young.  I think I was only 21 or 22 when the last one occurred.  I didn't have the life experience to really know how to process something like this.  But like Quentin Tarantino, I knew enough to do more than I did.

Entry 396: The Rubik's Cube of Life

The in-laws are in town.  I mostly like it when they come.  They're good people, and S's mom really helps out with cooking and cleaning.  However, when you add two more grown people to a not-humongous house, things start to get a bit crowded no matter how much you like them.  Plus, Indian people typically don't put the same value on personal privacy as do people raised in the States -- it's a culture difference -- so they are more okay with staying right on top of one another.  I remember when S lived in a tiny condo by herself and her family came to visit and they had five adults and a toddler all staying in a 500-square-foot area.  S's family is not hard not up for money, so asked her why they just didn't get a hotel room for a few days, and she said it was not even a possibility -- culturally they just would never do that.  It's wasn't even in the question.  In a way, it's nice -- you're much less likely to get lonely (I heard a piece on a podcast about a predominantly Indian retirement community, and how the norm was that anybody could stop by anybody else's room at any moment and it wasn't considered rude); in another way, it's like, "Can I just have an hour alone, please?"

But I got some time to myself right now.  S and her parents took Lil' S1 with them on some errands, so it's just me, a napping Lil' S2, a cup of coffee, and my laptop.  Aaaaah... bliss.

I had a funny episode with S's dad, where he couldn't find the spare key we gave him when he first arrived.  The first thing I suggested is that he check the pockets of all the shirts he had worn recently (I frequently see him put the key there when he takes his daily constitutional).  But he insisted that he put it in this little box on our mantle like he always does.  He thought the kids got into it, which is a perfectly reasonable theory, except everything else in the box was in order.  When the kids get into something, it looks like a twister came through.  So he starts looking all over the mantle and on the floor near the mantle, and again I'm like, "check your pockets," but he doesn't, so it's just lost for the day, and they don't have a key.  (I don't let on how much it bothers me not knowing where this key is.)  So then today, I ask if he found it yet, and he said he hadn't and starts looking for it again.  Twenty minutes later he says, "Found it!  It was in one my shirt pockets."  Of course.  The funny part is that there is no recognition, no "Hey, you were right along.  Should have just looked there first," it's just "found it," moving on.  I think he just legit didn't hear me when I was telling him to look in his pockets, or he heard me but it didn't register.  I think that's pretty typical human behavior actually -- we get tunnel vision and just can't see anything outside of a narrow scope.  My father-in-law was convinced he put the key in the box, and so any initial rejection of that premise just didn't compute.

Anyway...

I've taken up a new mini hobby: Rubik's Cube solving.  At first, I was going to figure it out all by myself, from scratch (apparently if you are good with permutations in abstract algebra, which at one point I was, you can figure it out), but this lasted about ten minutes, before it was

So I went online and got the instructions.  Once you have the instructions, it's mostly straightforward, but you still have to figure some things out on your own.  It's a nice little project.  I'm going to get to the point where I can solve it in a few minutes from memory -- that's the only way you can impress people -- nobody thinks it's cool if you're like, "Check this out!  If you give me 45 minutes and let me reference the directions on the Internet I'll can solve this puzzle!" -- but it's not easy, because there are a lot of moves to remember, and there's not just one path to take every time.  You have to learn all the different scenarios.  It takes a lot of practice.

S doesn't really like this new hobby of mine because she says I just zone out and don't pay attention to anybody while I'm doing it, which there is probably some truth to.  But the thing is, S doesn't like anything I do.  I swear, she just wants me to sit there and stare into space, doing nothing, so that I don't seem distracted when she makes an offhand comment to me every five minutes.

As you can probably tell, this is one of our ongoing "discussions," -- the zoning-out discussion.  My general defense is, "Aren't you glad you have a husband who has hobbies he's interested in?  Isn't that better than some passionless dolt?"  I'm not sure if she totally buys it or not.

[Rubik's Cube inventor and crossword puzzle favorite ERNO Rubik]

In other news, Lil' S2 is really starting to grow up fast.  He can talk now, which is fun and cute.  He's even learned how to tattle on his brother,"To-to," as he calls him.  ("To-to do that!  To-to do that!")  I think he's still a bit behind verbally, but he's catching up quickly.  He's definitely behind where Lil' S1 was at his age.  We have video of Lil' S1 counting to ten by myself when he was a few months younger than Lil' S2 is now, and Lil' S2 can't really count at all yet.  He can maybe get to three, before he just starts saying the first parts of random numbers ("Waah, do, tree, nigh, si, te!").  But I'm still not worried because Lil' S2 seems to be pretty advanced analytically.  From a very early age, he understood most of what we told him, and he's really good with puzzles.  He does this US states puzzle by himself without any help.  It's pretty impressive.  Also, he's already telling us when he has to go poop sometimes ("Poop-butt! Poop-butt!"), which is great.  I cannot wait to ditch the diapers.  Tossing our stink-ass Diaper Genie will be a major milestone in my parenting career.

Alright, speaking of Lil' S2, I hear him waking up now.  Better go.  Until next time...

Entry 395: Bad Weekend for Humans

Last weekend was a bad one for humans.  The disaster in Puerto Rico was awful enough without the fucking moron (TM: Rex Tillerson) "running" our country deciding an island full of beleaguered, desperate brown Americans would be the next foil in his ongoing culture wars.  He's a disgrace.  He's been a disgrace since day one, but that doesn't make it any less true now.

Then to pile catastrophe on top of catastrophe, a deranged man killed 50 people (and injured scores more) with an assault rifle in Las Vegas.  This, naturally, opened up the floodgates for the spate of "thoughts and prayers" from (mostly Republican) politicians who then will do absolutely nothing about it.  I just don't get this.  I just don't get gun culture.  I understand having a gun if you want to hunt or shoot skeet or if you legitimately want to protect yourself (although I think it's drastically overstated how effective they are for self-defense).  But this notion of equating a war-ready arsenal of assault rifles with "freedom" is beyond me -- as is the idea that pretty much anybody should be able to buy pretty much any gun and pretty much any ammo with pretty much no safety training or experience.

A lot of Americans see eye-to-eye with me, which is good, but a lot of Americans don't, which is the problem.  Proponents of gun control love to blame the NRA for gun violence -- which is fine by me, I loathe the NRA -- but the truth of the matter, as I see it, is that's it's not really the NRA itself, it's the millions of people who love guns.  They make the NRA, not vice-versa.  I've seen a lot of tweets going around by liberals claiming congress is "owned" by the NRA, but actually they give only nominal amounts of money to candidates.  They don't have to spend a lot.  In fact, I would say your typical Republican candidate needs the NRA more than the NRA needs the typical Republican candidate.  It's the people, the voters, my fellow Americans.  They love guns, and there is seemingly no amount of death that can ever convince that guns are possibly, maybe part of the problem with gun violence.

I don't like what Bill O'Reilly said about mass shootings being the "price of freedom."  But I think it's something with which a lot of people agree.  In fact, I think that if God came down from heaven and offered hardcore gun lovers a deal -- all gun violence would somehow be ended instantly, but in return they would have to relinquish all their guns -- I don't they take it.  They would rather have guns than peace.  They might not ever admit it, even to themselves, which is why they make a lot of terrible rationalizations about owning guns that involve hammers and cars and Chicago and Switzerland and force monopolies.  I don't think we're going to be able to change the laws until we change the culture; although, circularly, I think changing the laws would go a long way toward changing the culture.

The good news is that now that outed serial sexual harasser Harvey Weinstein has pledged to take on the NRA, everything should be all good in, what, a few months?  Jeez, what an awful story and an awful man.  The only thing I really knew about him came from Adam Carolla, who basically called him a crook, saying he would cook the books on movies he produced to avoid paying the movie makers their just royalties (I think he produced Carolla's movie The Hammer), so I had a negative image of him already.  I had no idea he was so involved in Democratic politics (although it sounds as if the actual amount he donated has been exaggerated), and I couldn't care less.  Listen, if you didn't know before this there is sexism/misogyny on the left, you are the world's biggest naif.  It's much more about power than politics.  Many powerful dudes abuse their power and treat people, particularly women, even more particularly young, vulnerable women, like shit.  They get away with it for so long because speaking out against it, even if you are totally in the right, sucks.  It's often easier to just move along, especially if you get a settlement offer.

Weinstein has tried to pull the "it was a different time" garbage to explain away his actions.  (As somebody on Twitter wrote: "You have to understand, it was a different time.  The science on whether women were people was still up in the air.")  This is clearly a very weak attempt at rationalization -- he is much better off with the mea culpa, "I have a problem and am working hard to fix it," route -- but he probably isn't wrong when he says that this is part of the culture.  This is actually a big reason why I've been very reluctant, despite some very good opportunities, to give it a go in Silicon Valley.  The bro-y lifestyle just doesn't sound appealing, and the sexism I've heard so much about is a part of this.  It's not the entire thing -- it might not even the biggest thing (the hours, the instability, the expenses of raising a family in the Bay Area, etc. also come into play) -- but it is a thing I take into consideration.

Alright, I think I've said enough for now.  Until next time...

Entry 394: Meta-Blogging

I realize I forgot to post something to this blog last week.  The reason why is because I published a crossword puzzle last week, and when I do that I usually write a post at my puzzle blog, and I also usually don't have the time/energy to write two bullshit blog entries a week -- as a family man, my bullshit time/energy capacity is highly constrained (if only I was a deadbeat dad...).

You can read my puzzle post here.  And I'll be back with something here next week.  Actually, it looks like I have another(!) puzzle published next Friday, so it will probably be another puzzle post.  But the week after that, you can expect another thrillingly, topical discussion about something like time travel paradoxes in movies.

Until next time...

Entry 393: How Time-Travel Movies Can Resolve Paradoxes

There are real things going on in the world right now -- things that are not so great, like hurricanes and floods and racist attorneys general.  If you want to read about such things -- and you should; don't bury your head in the sand -- feel free to leave my blog and go to a legitimate news site right now and read about them (and donate some money if you can spare it).  I won't be offended.  But if you need a distraction, about a completely moot topic, keep reading.

Time-travel is a common plot element in science fiction.  It's one rife with paradoxes.  A few very notable examples can be found in the Terminator franchise.  In the original movie, Kyle Reese goes back in time to stop The Terminator, sent from the future by the evil machines, from killing Sarah Connor, so that she can give birth to John Connor, who will lead a successful human resistance against the machines.  The paradox arises when we learn that Kyle Reese is also John Connor's father -- but then how did John Connor get there to lead the resistance in the first place?!

In the second movie, The Terminator is now a good guy (Arnold was too marketable a star at that point to make him the enemy), who thwarts an attempt by a different time-traveling terminator to kill a now teenage John Connor.  Also in this movie, The Terminator destroys a chip that paved the way for the technological advances leading to the takeover by the machines (which was left by behind by the original bad Terminator).  But in so doing, wouldn't he have eliminated the very technology that created him, and thus wouldn't he disappear instantly after having done that?  (In the movie, he does not disappear, but instead dramatically destroys himself immediately after destroying the chip -- or maybe he has Sarah destroy him, because he's programmed not to destroy himself; either way, he gets melted in some sort of industrial lava).

These paradoxes are things I've wrestled with before, and I came up with a way to think about time and reality that will resolve them.  As always, these are probably not original ideas.  I'm sure if I Googled it I could find a dozen websites laying out these ideas better than I could.  But I'm not going to Google it.  I thought of it on my own, so I'm going to write it up on my own.  Also, I'm certainly not claiming this is how our physical universe actually works.  I'm just saying this is how movies could resolve their time-travel paradoxes -- and, who knows, maybe there are some that do this that I've never seen.

The gist of the idea is to think of time as comprised of discrete moments and the universe being comprised of discrete particles.  At any given moment t, we are in some state of reality based on the location (and other physical properties) of all the particles in the universe.  At the next moment t+1, we move to a new state in which at least one particle has changed it's location.  However, in addition to "reality", the state we are actually in, we also have billions and billions of "potential realities" that could have happened if a particle did something different than it actually did.  So we have one potential reality for possible every movement (within the laws of physics) of every particle in the universe.

For example, in the diagram, our reality is, say, blue, but if at least one particle had done something different, then we might have been on the red track or the green track or one of the orange tracks or one of the googols of other tracks not pictured.  Those other tracks don't actually exist, but they could have existed, if a particle (or particles) had done something different.

What determines which state is the next part reality?  How the particles know where to go next?  How we actually travel through time?  Good question.  Maybe it's random chance (God does play dice); maybe it's a divine hand; or, most intriguing to me, maybe we determine it -- maybe that's what free will is.  Our collective self-governance determines the next state of reality.  For the sake of resolving movie paradoxes, however, it doesn't really matter.

Thinking of time and the universe in this way, can instantly eliminate almost all time-travel paradoxes.  For example, in T2, once the terminators go back in time, their presence changes the state of the universe at that moment, thus putting us in a new reality (because some particles are in a different place).  So, say, the red track is now reality, and the blue track -- the one in which the machines take over -- is now a potential reality.  The goal now for the good guys is to make sure the machines also don't take over in the red reality.  (That is, in actual reality, which would be very close to the old (blue) reality since only a little bit has change.)  The Terminator succeeds by destroying the bad terminator (John lives), and the chip, making the human-enslaving technology now nonexistent in the new (red) reality.  And since he destroyed it in the red reality, not in the blue reality, in which he was created (which is now only a potential reality), he's not preventing his own existence.   He was made in the blue reality and "jumped" backwards to the red reality, where he lives, until he destroys himself a few minutes later.  Paradox resolved!

(Although, one thing that bothers me about this is that it seems like it can create energy out of nothing.  Every time a time-traveler comes back to a certain moment, they are new energy in reality that wasn't there before.  I think you can resolve this, by saying that time travel works by swapping energy from the two states.  So if somebody goes from state S021 to state S0 in the diagram above, an equal amount of energy must be swapped from S0 to S021, somehow.  That's what time travel is: an exchange of energy between moment-states.)

Resolving how Kyle Reese can be John Connor's father is a bit more difficult, but it still can be done.  Here's how.  Say, Kyle was born in the blue reality, and there is no John Connor.  For some reason, he goes back in time, makes sweet love to Sarah Connor, and she births John Connor, and all of this happens in the red reality.  Then, for other unknown reasons, Kyle goes forward into the future of the red reality (theoretically possible for real!).  He ends up in the middle of the robot apocalypse, but his own son, who is now his age, successfully leads the human rebellion.  So the machines send The Terminator back in time to kill Sarah, and so Kyle goes back in time to stop him and knock-up Sarah again, and all this happens in, say, the green reality -- The Terminator is this story.  There we go!  Air-tight!  That is, until I think of a logical flaw in bed, unable to sleep, at 2 am tomorrow morning.

Until next time...

Entry 392: Week One Is In The Books

Lil' S1's first week at his new school went pretty well.  He adapted almost seamlessly, but  the same cannot be said for his mother.  She can get so stressed over things like this.  I know why.  She says why.  It's because she has "working mom guilt," and she feels like if everything doesn't go perfectly (and it never does) it's somehow her fault (even though it's not).  I understand this.  Women are unfairly held to a much higher standard when it comes to parenting than men are.  If a woman sends her kid to school in dirty clothes, she gets the side eye; if a man does it, he gets applauded for taking his kid to school.  It doesn't help that the daycare we use reinforces this double standard.  Both S and I are there once a day, but whenever there's a problem the workers always talk to her about it -- even if it's about me!  I usually do drop-off in the morning, and once I read the weather report wrong (I got Columbia, SC, where S's parents live confused with Columbia, MD, where I work), so I dressed Lil' S2 in too little clothing, and I didn't bring a jacket.  On this particular day, I also was doing pickup, so I went there and got him, and they didn't say anything to me, and then I took him back the next day (appropriately dressed this time), and they still didn't say anything to me, and then when S picked him up, they told her that yesterday I didn't dress him properly.  They had two chances to tell me directly, but instead they put in on S.

That's the type of shit she has to deal with, so I try to be sympathetic, but it's not always easy, because a) sympathy is not my strong suit; b) sometimes she takes it out on me, like if I don't do everything exactly the way she wants it done, then she gets mad at me.  As an example, Lil' S1 apparently has "homework" that he has to do during aftercare and then turn in the next day.  So, one morning last week, I inadvertently take it out of his backpack before school, and S sees it when she gets home and gets annoyed and tells me to make sure it gets handed in the next day.  Fine.  I make sure it's in his backpack the next morning.  But then that evening, S notices that it's still in there.  It never got handed in.  So she gets really annoyed with me because I didn't physically hand the paper to his teacher.  So I get annoyed back because I think she's way overreacting.  It's just a stupid worksheet for a kindergartner -- how important could it be?  Also, why is it incumbent on me to hand in his homework?  How is it helping the student if the parent is the one responsible for it?  Commonsensically, one would assume that if this homework is really important to his teacher then she would ask him to hand it in, no?

Anyway, the next day, I told his teacher explicitly that his homework was in his backpack, and she was like, "Oh... yeah... okay... well, I'll have to get him a folder... uh, I'll take care of it... we'll get it sorted."  It was obviously as important to her as I figured.  There also was a mix-up with school lunch one day last week, but I won't go into it, other than to say Lil' S1 did not go hungry.

I think S is feeling especially guilty right now because she has to go to Africa for about a week for work on Wednesday.  This trip cropped up quickly, so we didn't have time to bring in reinforcements (her parents) like we usually do when she goes away.  It's just going to be me -- which is fine, I actually don't mind at all.  One week isn't that long.  It won't be that much more work for me.  But she feels guilty about it, so she volunteered to get the kids out of the house for a few hours everyday this long weekend and let me have some free time.  I certainly won't say no to that!  That's actually how I prefer to work, in general.  I like to work really intensely for a while and then take long a break.  That was one of my favorite parts about school.  I wish I could work on that schedule now, like put in 60 hour weeks for a month and then take two weeks off.  It's tough to do with kids, though, and it's even tougher to do when you work for a company that won't let you do it.

In other news, I turned 40 recently.  It's cool.  I don't really get excited by birthdays or round numbers, though.  I'm generally happy with my life, which is the most important thing.  I don't mind getting older.  I don't like the random aches and pains, but that's about it.  I do kinda wish I had thrown a big 40th birthday party for myself while I was in the Sea-Tac region, just so that I could get a bunch of friends and family in one place, a rarity these days, but I also hate planning, so it didn't happen.  Maybe I'll do it next year.  It would be kinda funny to celebrate 41 as if it's some great milestone.  It's just as good as 40, if you think about it.

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

Entry 391: Old School vs. New School

Big news this week at the G & G household: Lil' S1 was accepted to a DC public charter school.  Applicants are selected by lottery, so it's mostly luck, but also S was extremely persistent in checking his status (i.e., bothering the school on a daily basis), and I think that might have helped (it certainly didn't hurt).  She's really happy about this.  I'm more "meh."  Actually "meh" is the wrong exclamation, because it connotes a lack of interested.  It's not that I don't care; I'm ambivalent.  I have strong feelings on both sides.  I haven't totally reconciled them, but I'm going to try to lay them out in this entry.

The first, most important thing is that I wanted this to happen because S wanted it to happen.  She's obsessed with getting our kids into the "best" school possible.  Rankings and tiers and reputation and things of that nature mean a lot to her, and I don't think she would ever be content sending our kids to the "normal" neighborhood school, when these "better" charter schools exist as an option.  She's got a bit of Tiger Mom in her that way.

I'm totally fine with her viewpoint on this -- I think it will probably serve our kids well in the long run -- but as you can probably guess from my use of quotation marks above, I feel differently about things.  I'm a socialist when it comes to schooling.  I'm not about my kids being as advantaged as possible, but rather about them being part of a system that works for everybody and one in which everybody works for it.  Is that too idealistic?  Maybe.  But it's how I feel.

I also question whether or not "better" schools are actually better.  I'm of the mindset that education is much more about what you, as a parent and a student, put into it, than it is about where you go to school.  But it could be I'm too biased by my own personal experience on this.  I never went to an elite school -- it was public high school and state universities for me -- but I feel I attained the same level of academic success and amassed the same skills I would have if I went to a posh private high school and an Ivy League university.  (I don't have the same connections as I would have in that case, but that's another story.)  My feeling is that the best schools don't make the best students, but rather the best students make the best schools.  Harvard is great because all the smartest kids choose to go to Harvard.  If suddenly they chose to go to Middle Tennessee State, then Middle Tennessee State would be great (and Harvard less so), even if nothing else about the two universities changed.  That's my broad opinion on the matter.  It could be total wrong, but it's worth noting that in his book Everybody Lies, Seth Stephen-Davidowitz highlights a big-data study that lends some support to this theory.

So, I'm not particularly worried about my sons lagging behind academically no matter where they go to school.  I want them to go somewhere that's safe and clean and comfortable (and of course it has to have some baseline of academic standards), but also I want them to go somewhere they (and we, as parents) can contribute to the local community.  And therein lies my ambivalence with sending him to a charter school.

I haven't totally wrapped my head around charter schools yet.  On the one hand, they really can be a savoir for low-income families who are "trapped" in districts with failing schools.  On the other hand, they can further disadvantage those students who don't have parents willing work to the system -- that is to say, exactly those students who need it most.

Because here's what happens, or at least here's what happened to us at our school, which I assume is what happens a lot of places.  Lil' S1 started going to our neighborhood school two years ago for PK3.  It's a decent school, overall.  The teachers are mostly good, and I like the principal, but it does have some shortcomings.  It's old and needs to be renovated; the thermostats don't work correctly, so students complain about it being hot or cold in their classrooms; the kindergarten classrooms are glorified storage areas, which don't even have windows; and also sometimes it can seem disorganized when dropping off or picking up students.  It supposedly is in line for a major overhaul, but DC keeps delaying the funding.  Now it's set for 2020 or something like that.

The school is a mix of students I will call "advantaged" and "disadvantaged," for lack of betters terms.  The parents of some advantaged students see these shortcomings and want to upgrade (which is totally understandable), so they apply to charter schools or pay for private schools or move to the Maryland or Virginia suburbs.  The parents of the disadvantaged students can't or won't do this -- they might be poor or overworked or absent or have substance abuse issues or they just didn't win the charter school lottery (and even applying for charter schools has a cost associated with it in terms of time and incidental expenses).  So now the ratio of advantaged to disadvantaged kids is much lower than it was before, and this of course makes the school worse (and cruelly the school has less money to fix things, because funding is dependent on enrollment numbers).  Probably the best thing for a struggling student is to be immersed in a school of mostly non-struggling students.  And that's how schools should work in my opinion.  The privileged students should buoy the underprivileged.

But that's not how it works.  Instead all the other parents of advantaged students look around and see everybody else leaving and decided it's in their best interests to leave as well.  Everybody could just stay and work together to make their school better, but they don't, and it makes the remaining students worse off.  (A friend of mine framed it in terms of the prisoner's dilemma.)  And by the way, this doesn't necessarily break down racially the way you might expect.  It's true that the vast majority of the disadvantaged children are black and brown, but so are many of the advantaged children.  It's not "white flight"; it's "engaged parent" flight.  And that's the worst part, because it is precisely those students who don't have engaged parents who need good schools the most.

So here were are.  We are sending our kid to charter school, and I'm feeling very conflicted about it.

Until next time...

Entry 390: To U.P. and Beyond! (But Not That Far Beyond)

The G & G clan spent the past few weeks in University Place, Washington visiting my family.  First things first, U.P. really needs to change its name.  I know many people are hesitant to change things because change is scary and things from the past always seem better than they were.  But University Place is the stupidest name ever for a city containing exactly zero universities.  College Station, Texas and State College, Pennsylvania make sense because they are home to two of the largest colleges in the U.S.; University Place, Washington makes no sense.  It got its named because the University of Puget Sound once purchased land in the city (then an unincorporated region of Pierce County) and was going to build a campus there, but never did.  (The private high school Charles Wright Academy was built on the land instead, but Private High School Place is an even worse name.)  So somehow during the period of time after the land was purchased by UPS and before it was sold back to the county, people started calling it University Place, and it stuck.  My question: How long was the construction pending?  Months?  Years?  Whatever the case, we are now apparently stuck with an absurd name for an otherwise lovely city.

I've heard rumblings that somebody somewhere tried/is trying/is going to try to change the name to Chambers Bay, but I don't know much about it.  Other than Chambers Bay, which would be a fine name, here are a few other suggestions:

• Whiter Tacoma
• Roundabout Station
• Younger Fircrest
• Gary Larsonland
• Dead Crab City

The last one is a reference to Titlow Beach, where we spent an afternoon, and Lil' S1 used the occasion to wade into the water and "collect" dead crabs.  He got a massive handful and wanted to bring them home with him.  It was pretty gross.

[A very hazy view from Chambers Bay.  This is before the smoke from the Canadian wild fires had completely dissipated.]

In addition to learning my oldest son has a penchant for deceased crustaceans, I also learned that he is good at swimming and bad at rollerskating.  We used the pool of some family friends and Lil' S1 was swimming by himself for relatively long stretches.  I really want him to get to the point where if he fell into the deep end of a pool, he could swim to the wall unassisted, without incident.  I think he could do it now, but I'm not completely sure.

Rollerskating is a completely different story.  I thought he might be good at it, because he has good balance, when it comes to climbing and jumping and stuff like that, but he was a disaster on skates.  (My nephew G had a birthday party at the skating rink the night before we flew back to DC.)  It was like that scene in Bambi, where he's learning to walk -- legs flailing in every direction at once -- only there was no success at the end.  After a few minutes, he started crying and demanding his skates be removed, and that was the end of that.  It's fine.  I do wish he would have tried a bit longer though.  I don't really care if my son is good at rollerskating or not, but I do want him to have some perseverance.  He kept saying, "I don't want to rollerskate.  I'm not good at it," which makes me a bit nervous, as I don't want him to get in the habit of just giving up on things he isn't instantly good at it.  But he's not even five years old yet, so... yeah.

The past few times I've been back to U.P., the weather has been immaculate and this trip was no exception.  I don't know if it's global warming or luck or some combination thereof, but almost everyday it was clear skies and temps in the 70s and 80s.  That makes it SO much better.  The worst part about living in the Pacific Northwest (west of the Cascades) is the constant rain and overcast skies.  (I heard it was a particularly bad fall and winter.  I think my dad said it rained everyday in October.)  Absent that, there is no place I would rather be.

[My dad watering the shrubs with Lil' S1]

But it wasn't all sunshine and moonbeams.  My uncle B died a few days before we left.  This doesn't evoke a particularly strong response in me, as I barely knew him.  My dad's side of the family has always been a bit, let's say, odd, especially so my uncle B.  His is a sad story.  He came back from the Vietnam War with obvious mental and emotional problems, and it seems as if his life never really got on track because of it.  He always seemed to be "searching" for something, and he tried to fill it with things like astrology and Kabbalah and whatever other mystical hocus-pocus was popular at the time.   He was a hard guy to like, as he was constantly holding grudges against other family members -- my dad included -- over trivial matters.  To me, he was always a harmless weird old guy, whom we would see sometimes when we came to visit and sometimes not, depending on his current mental state.  I'm certainly not happy that he died, but I'm not sad either.  I didn't know him.  I feel about the same way you probably do reading this right now.  Maybe it's sad, at a macro level, that I didn't have a stronger relationship with him, but since there was never a relationship there to begin with, it doesn't feel sad that one doesn't exist.  It's like getting sad because an imaginary friend is no longer speaking to you.

I actually was more sad when I found out that the my friend JW's uncle M had also died recently.  He committed suicide a few months ago.  Unlike with my own uncle, I actually hung out with M from time to time.  I used to go to their family lake house quite a bit, and it was like a second home for M.  He was a good guy.  He definitely didn't seem like somebody who would take his own life, but a lot of suicidal people keep that side hidden from even their closest confidants, let alone their nephew's friend whom they see once a quadrennial.  M wasn't married and didn't have any kids.  And apparently he was in chronic pain because of a bad back injury.  I'm certainly not in favor of suicide, especially at a relatively young age (I think M was in his 50s), but if you are in constant pain, and you don't see any relief on the horizon, and you don't have any kids to raise or a spouse to support, then okay, I guess.  I mean, not okay.  It's still sad.  It's still something I would try to talk somebody out of.  But it's more okay than it could be, I suppose.

Alright, happier news: I saw my old friend and college roommate TB for the first time in a few years.  Since I last saw him, he got divorced, took time off from his job, had something approaching a breakdown, got help, and turned things back around.  He seems to be doing genuinely well now.  And it was great to see him.  He's one of those guys that just makes you feel good to be around.  I really wish we lived in the same area.  I'm bad at corresponding, and he's worse than me.  So it's rare when we get together.  (The only reason our meeting happened this time is because I saw he was in the area on Facebook.)  But when we do, it's like old times again.  That's how you know who your true friends are.  When you get together after years apart, how long does it take for the initial air of formality to dissipate?  If the answer is instantaneously, then that's a true friend.

I have tons of stories about TB from back in the day, but here's one of my favorites.  He was constantly struggling to make ends meet throughout college, and there were times when he literally had no money to his name.  Once, he came home with a $10 bill and said that he was getting paid tomorrow, but that this bill was all he had for a meal that night.  Back then, $10 in our smallish college city was more than enough to get a decent amount food, so we went to the grocery store, and here's what he bought: a giant bag of tortilla chips, a tub of french onion dip, two Rainier tallboys, and the movie Soap Dish.

I got to see some of my other friends while I was there as well.  My aforementioned friend JW just had a baby with his wife Y, so I got see their new little guy.  They've had really bad luck with pregnancies, so seeing them with a baby is really something special.  I also saw my friend JY and his family.  His only child is about to turn 14 (!), so he's a legit teenager.  It's such a different parenting world.  We went to a Mariners game, and he and his buddy could just go off on their own while the adults hung out among themselves.  Everybody says to enjoy your kids being young while you can, but, man, it would be nice to not have to constantly worry about entertaining them at every turn.

[We saw Edgar Martinez's number 11 retired by the Mariners.  If you look carefully, you can see the image of Edgar in his batting stance cut into the outfield grass.]

Seeing my family was great also, as always.  My brother and sister in-law also have a new little baby girl, Lil' A, and she's just as cute as you would imagine.  They recently moved from Seattle to U.P., so now my entire immediate family lives there (except us).  It makes it easier to see everybody when you come visit.  Lil' Q, my bro's oldest, is a few months younger than Lil' S1, and they get along pretty well.  Sure occasionally they have incidents -- like when Lil' S1 hit Lil' Q with a map at the zoo or when Lil' Q poked Lil' S1 in the eye during their sleep over ("I forgot I wasn't supposed to do that" was Lil' Q's defense) -- but for the most part they play together pretty well.

Alright, I wanted to write a bit more, but as usual I'm out of time.  S is away at the moment with the kids, and if I don't unpack my half of the suitcase before she gets home, it's not going to be pretty.  She has been asking me to do it for the last two days after all.

Until next time...