Entry 269: Some Thoughts

First off, since you are surely all wondering, let me just say, yes, my first week without the Adam Carolla Show was difficult, but I made it through.  I did it with the help of an old friend named Terry Gross.  I rediscovered Fresh Air, a show I used to listen to regularly "live" on the radio, back in the days of yore.  It's a solid show.  Sure, occasionally you have to skip past a review of a book you've never heard of, and sometimes you get Dave Davies filling in for Terry Gross (always a let down), but for the most part it's good listening.  Terry's recent interview with Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette on Boyhood was particular interesting.  I love that movie.  I get the main criticism -- nothing happens -- but that's part of its charm for me.  For the most part it's a completely mundane story, and yet somehow it kept me rapt the entire time.  That's tough to pull off, but Linklater does it.

So, I don't have anything big to talk about, so I'll just toss out a few things on my mind and call it a post.  Sound good?  Good.

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On Facebook, a video of a buffalo fighting a rhino is making the rounds.  I started to watch it, just because, and then after thirty seconds of some buffalo-on-rhino head-butting, I thought, "wait, why do I want to see animals getting hurt?" so I turned it off.  From the description, I ascertain the rhino won because it says something like, "buffalo chooses wrong animal to try take its anger out on!"  It's weird when we try to ascribe humanity to animals.  Because the buffalo (presumably) loses the fight and gets hurt, we want to frame things as if the buffalo is some sort of bully getting its comeuppance, instead of a dumb, confused beast fighting out of survival instinct.

You see this sometimes in nature videos, where they'll show the poor, innocent gazelle getting run down by the wolf, and everybody feels bad for the gazelle.  But that wolf is starving -- it's gotta eat!  Or they flip the script and show you an emaciated polar bear trying desperately to get at a baby walrus, and as the adult walruses fend it off, you think, "c'mon, you've got a whole litter, just give him one!"

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In general, what do you think the success rate is for stories or videos you open on Facebook?  20%?  10%?  Something around there.  It's low.  Sometimes I feel like putting up a post saying, "Hey Facebook friends, be more interesting!"  But that would probably just make me look like a dick.

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One thing that I do find interesting, in a very "something is wrong with society" sort of way is the whole kerfuffle with Tom Brady and his slightly deflated footballs.  I can't believe this is a top news story -- not a top sports story, a top news story in general.  Google "deflate-gate" and you get over 12 million hits, including links on the first page to ABC News, NBC News, Fox, and TMZ.  (Did you see what I did there with Fox?)   The term "Salman Saudi Arabia" returns fewer than 11 million Google hits.  Apparently we care more about the air pressure of footballs used in the first half of a 38-point blowout than we do about the succession of leaders of a country with which we have extremely complicated and important relations.

However, I'm glad deflate-gate is a big deal, because I find it funny.  For one thing, people are taking it SO seriously.  For another, it gives us non-New England football fans more fodder with which to troll Patriots fans -- and trolling Patriots fans is very enjoyable.  Don't get me wrong, the Patriots are legitimately shady -- I think part of the reason Bill Belichick is such an effective coach is because he's pathologically competitive and views rule-bending in a very amoral way -- but I don't think under-inflated footballs should crack anybody's top-50 of things about which they should give a fuck.

I'm mean, if you're interested in cheating in sports, you've got much better options:  Read about Rosie Ruiz or check out the 30 for 30 films Playing for the Mob and The Price of Gold.  I mean, let's not forget that just two decades ago, the husband of an Olympic figure skater and his buddy clubbed a rival figure skater in the knee a few weeks before the Olympics in an attempt to knock her out of the competition.  If we remember that, a football being two P.S.I. under regulations really doesn't seem so bad, does it?

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I heard my wife use the word "frauded" several times on the phone the other day while talking to a coworker, and I had to struggle to resist the urge to tell her that it's defrauded; frauded is not a word.  She does a lot of work with non-Americans, so I can only hope that whomever she was talking to that English is not their first language.

In her defense, de- is a very weird prefix in English.  It means to get rid of  -- debug, delouse, decamp, declaw, etc. -- except for when it means the exact opposite, like in defraud and debar and denude and so on.  It's an auto-antonym affix.

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I read an article in the New Yorker about the music service Spotify.  It's been in the news a bit lately because Taylor Swift pulled her entire catalog from it.  Apparently, she was willing to allow her music to be behind a paywall (Spotify has a free and a subscription service), but didn't want it to be streamed for free, because, she said, "In my opinion, the value of an album is, and will continue to be, based on the amount of heart and soul an artist has bled into a body of work".  Uh ... I have nothing against Taylor Swift, but give me a break.  This is pretentious superstar drivel.  The value of one's work, monetarily speaking, is determined much more by the market than it is by how much "heart and soul" one puts into it.  And if you want to get all artsy on us, then how about this, Ms. Swift, how about instead of paying you in money, your fans pay you back in appreciation?  That seems like a fair exchange: your heart and soul in making your art, your fans heart and soul in appreciating it.  From now on, you only play for applause, deal?

I hate when performers do shit like this and then try to play the artist card.  Taylor Swift pulled her catalog because she wants more control and more money, which is fine.  She's a big enough star to pull it off.  Just don't feed us some bullshit line about how much blood you put into your work.  Plus "artist" is a very generous way to describe Taylor Swift.  I've heard "Shake It Off"; it ain't exactly Beethoven's 5th.

I'm of three minds on streaming sites like Spotify.  They're good, neutral, and bad.  The good part is that they turned the music industry from one that was extremely consumer-unfriendly into one that is consumer-friendly.  It used to be that if you wanted to buy a song, you had to buy an entire album for $15 or buy the single (with five shitty dance mixes) for $7 -- and this was in 1993, those prices would be more like $25 and $12, today.  That's exorbitant.  Now you can buy single songs for $2 or get access to huge catalogs on-demand for "free" (i.e., for listening to a bunch of commercials) or for something like $10 a month.  That seems much more fair to the consumer.

The neutral part is that musicians bring in less money from direct music sales now than they used to.  I have no problem with people making a little money off their music; I have no problem with people making a lot of money off their music.  But I have no problem with people not making any money, as well.  There is no law that says if you put a lot of time and effort into something that people have to buy it.  (If there was, I'd be a billionaire off my crossword puzzles.)  Maybe you're just not that good, and it has nothing to do with the state of the music industry.  And if you're a musician and you don't like the streaming services, don't use them.  There are other ways you can monetize your wares.  You can sell music exclusively from your own website; you can "sell out" and license your work for commercials; or you can give your music away for free as a way to advertise for your live shows.  As I once heard Chuck D say when he came to talk at my alum mater Western Washington University, (I'm paraphrasing) "If you want to make money in music, come to WWU and play a show, if you're good, people will pay to see you."  And if people don't pay to see you, then maybe you should look into taking some actuarial exams or something like that.

The bad part is that these streaming sites are not transparent in their payments and are apparently very difficult to audit.  In every article I read about Spotify, they claim they pay the artists x amount and the artist say they receive y amount where y << x.  Something isn't right.  It's one thing if people don't want to pay for your art.  It's another if they do, but the money isn't going to you.  David Lowery, Cracker frontman (and apparently skilled mathematician), has been advocating fervently for years for more royalties from streaming sites.  (Although in the linked article he gives some tepid praise to Spotify because of their paywall option.  His issue is more with Pandora.)  I completely understand why this upsets artists -- if people are making money off of your art and you aren't getting much of the cut, then that's obviously not right.  But this seems more like a general corporate-greed problem than it is a music-streaming problem.

And with that, it seems appropriate to end this entry with an embedded YouTube clip of Cracker's Teen Angst.  Don't worry Mr. Lowery, I'm certainly not making any money off of this.



Until next time ...

Entry 268: Podcasts

I started listening to podcasts about four years ago, and during that time, it's remarkable how reliant I've become on them.  Menial tasks are just so much more boring without them.  It's a wonder I didn't die of tedium pre-2010.  Every now and then I won't have a podcast chambered for my morning commute, and I'm forced to listen to the radio, and it's terrible.  The local NPR affiliate runs BBC News in the morning, so it's a lot of talk about the performance of the British pound or the government of David Camer-- zzz.  Or I can turn the dial to sports radio, which will probably be a commercial, and if it's not, I'll wish it was, because otherwise it's some yo-yo talking in soundbites and clichés, giving you his Subway Fresh Takes of the Week.  So I'm pretty reliant on podcasts.

But right now I'm having a difficult time with my new favorite medium.  I've made a very difficult and painful decision to unsubscribe to the Adam Carolla Show.  I'm a polyamorous podcast connoisseur, but ACS has been my main since the beginning.  But I feel it's time to move on.  Adam recently fired his newsgirl, Alison Rosen, which stirred up a bit of controversy (among the relatively few people who actually care, that is), and while I liked Alison that's not the reason I'm moving on.  The reason is because Adam's quick wit and ability to be off-the-cuff funny (he's still, hands down, the best in the business, in my opinion) can no longer overcome the negatives of the show -- the most pronounced of which is its repetitiveness.  It's the same stories, the same rants, and the same guest doing the same bits (Bung Lu Su is funny the first two or three times you hear it, not that first 50) over and over and over again.  I found myself listening out of habit, not necessarily because I was enjoying it.

[We had a good run guys.  Damn it!  We had a good run.]

Also there is Adam's politics, which I will admit played a factor.  He's a hardcore libertarian, and hardcore libertarians can get on my nerves very quickly.  For example, Adam holds a particular view that many libertarians share that drives me absolutely bonkers: that rich people are virtuous (or at least beneficial to society) simply for being rich.  That it's their taxes that pay for everything and that they're the ones keeping everybody employed.

I strenuously reject this notion, for one simple reason: If rich people weren't rich somebody else would be.  That's the part that is always missing from the libertarian/Randian view.  Any given rich person is a net zero to society because whatever services they provide: a) they're getting paid for handsomely, b) somebody else would do it if they didn't.  If you don't want to pay taxes, quit working.  I assure you society will replace you and get along just fine.  (On the flips side, if you want to find people who truly are beneficial to society, look to those who have the skills to be rich but are choosing instead to do jobs that aren't high-paying but important -- teacher, social worker, mentor, community organizer, etc.)

Now, if every rich person and every person will the skills to potentially be rich decided to quit working all at once, then that might be a problem.  But that's not going to happen anymore than every pizza company is going to quit making pizza.  It makes me laugh (in  a very cynical way) when people like Papa John "threaten" the country with less production (or higher prices) because of taxes or regulations.  Yes, that would temporarily hurt some of their employees.  But what would ultimately happen if Papa John's scaled back?  (Other than football fans might get a reprieve from those awful Peyton Manning commercials?)  Would their former employees never work again and pizza become a scarce commodity?  Or would Little Caesar's and your neighborhood joint get a bump in business?  I'm going to go with the latter.  It's called competition.  It's a tenet of capitalism.

That's another thing I don't understand.  Why is it that people like Adam Carolla (and presumably Papa John) extol the virtues of competition when it comes to tenured teachers or government workers or people like that, but they're blind to competition when it comes to the so-called job creators?  For thee, but not for me, apparently.  It's similar to something I've heard Ralph Nader say about outsourcing: If it's a necessary part of business, then let's take it all the way to the top; let's get a bunch of bilingual MBAs from China to work as CEOs for a fraction of the price.  Funny how this is never an option -- how it's never the executives that are the inefficiencies.  Why, it's almost as if it's a double standard.  It's no wonder Wall Street gets in a tizzy when Elizabeth Warren says to the average worker that the system is rigged against them: It means somebody smart is onto them.

Ah, yes, once again I've done that thing where I set out to write a paragraph on something and end up writing five on something completely different.  Oh well.

Anyway, the point is, now I need a new number one podcast.  I've got plenty of recommendations, and I've been casually dating a few, but it's hard to get back into something serious when you're so fresh off a breakup.  I put in so many years and got so comfortable with ACS, that it's going to take time to find a suitable replacement (and maybe I never will).  I mean, I love This American Life, but it's only a weekly show -- and not even weekly because they often play reruns.  I need something more steady.  (Although this week's episode on echolocation is unbelievable -- and I mean that almost literally.  I could barely believing it.)

The same goes for Bill Maher's show Real Time -- not steady enough.  Plus, I'm not completely on-board with Maher.  He's a "yeah, yeah, yeah, wait ... what?" guy for me.  That's what I do when I listen to his show: "Religion is stupid and dangerous!" yeah!;  "Inequality is a drag on our economy!" yeah!; "We need to stop climate change!" yeah!; "Flu shots will give you Alzheimer's disease!" wait ... what?

Maher, of course, is best-known these days for his outspoken views on Islam, religion in general, but Islam specifically.  He recently came under fire for agreeing with a guest who called Islam "the motherlode of bad ideas."  Even more recently he doubled-down on this by going on Jimmy Kimmel Live and saying in reference to the Paris attacks:

I know most Muslim people would not have carried out an attack like this.  But here’s the important point: Hundreds of millions of them support an attack like this. They applaud an attack like this. What they say is, ‘We don’t approve of violence, but you know what? When you make fun of the Prophet, all bets are off.'

On this, I can see both sides.  Reza Aslan takes Maher to task for his (Maher's) conflation of Islamic problems with cultural problems (such as female genital mutilation in Central Africa).  And I'm mostly with Aslan on this.  But when it comes to Maher's claim that many Muslims tacitly support (or at least don't expressly disapprove of) an attack like the one in Paris, I don't know.  And I mean that not as a figure of speech -- I literally don't know.  I don't even know how one would go about knowing, short of polling a bunch Muslims.  And even that might not work because when it comes to sensitive topics like this people might not say what they really think.

At the very least, however, I don't Maher's comments are ridiculous, and I don't think they should be dismissed out of hand.  I mean, break down what he's actually saying and think about it.  First, "hundreds of millions" sounds like a huge number, but considering there are 1.6 billion (with a b) Muslims in the world hundreds of millions could mean 10%.  Second, many Muslims -- many religious people in general -- openly believe in Hell.  They believe there is a place -- a literal place that exists in some reality somewhere -- where non-believers spend eternity suffering for their infidelities.  If you actually believe this -- if you actually believe in eternal punishment -- then believing that plain old mortal death is an appropriate punishment for heresy is quite reasonable by comparison.  The point is, a lot of religions preach a lot of fucked up things; pointing this out doesn't make you the contemptible one, and it doesn't constitute hate speech either.

Nor is it racism.  It's basically the opposite of racism.  It's judging people specifically not on the color of their skin, but on their beliefs and behaviors -- which is how you should judge people.  And if you think, in the case of Maher, he's selectively targeting Islam because it's a (mostly) non-white religion, then you should hear his thoughts on Christianity.

With all that said, if I were Bill Maher I would not have gone on Jimmy Kimmel's show and said what he said.  It's not fact-based enough.  What's he basing his claims on?  It seems like he's just speculating.  And if you are going to go before the public and make unfavorable proclamations about a group of people -- especially one with a history of discrimination -- you need to come with something stronger than speculation.  Otherwise you run the risk of looking like a fool.  Just ask Larry Summers.

Alright, that's all I got.  I have to go try to find a new daily podcast to love.

Until next time ...

Entry 267: Almost-Middle-Aged, Upper-Middle-Class Dad Problems

There are real problems in the world: In Paris, staff members of a satirical newspaper were killed by Muslim extremists for posting silly cartoons of the prophet Muhammad (among other offensive images); in Colorado Springs, some white nutjob detonated a homemade explosive devise outside a building housing an NAACP chapter; and right here in Washington D.C., the political party that now holds both branches of Congress is doubling down on their delusions of grandeur and their racism.*  

But I am not going to talk about these real problems.  It's not that I don't have thoughts on them; I do.  It's that I don't have a lot of free time, and I want to talk me -- about my problems.  After all, what's the point of keeping a blog with a readership barely in the double digits, if I don't get to talk about me?  Also, when it comes to the tragedy in Paris, at least, I don't want to get shot for saying the wrong thing.

My biggest problem, at the moment, is that I'm tired.  Lil' S has been wearing us out at night.  We got him off pacifiers, which is good.  But now we've just traded one problem for a more annoying one: He doesn't ever want to go to sleep.  As soon as you mention the word "bedtime", he starts whining.  And he's already mastered the art of the stall: "I need to wash my hands... I want more soap... I want a book... I want milk... I wanna different blanket... I want my panda... I want my Grover... I want socks... I don't want socks... I want the black pillow... I wanna sleep in the other bed... etc. ... etc."  And once we get through all that, if he's still not properly placated, there is always good old fashion tantrum-throwing.  Don't think my kid is above the tried-and-true meltdown.  

[I couldn't embed this clip, but it's relevant ... and funny.]

We are at the point now where we toss him his bed, lock his door, let him cry and scream for five minutes and then go up and try it again.  If we're lucky, by the second or third iteration he will actually stay in bed and fall asleep.  (And if we're extra lucky he will say some hilarious/cute things while throwing his fits: Open up this door, right now!)  But then he usually wakes up once or twice throughout the night, and we have to repeat the process.  To make matters worse he's been getting up for good way too early -- like 5:30 a.m. early.  He doesn't start daycare until 8:30, and I'm usually the one the who gets up with him, so not only am I super tired, but I also have to entertain him (or listen to him whine) for three hours.  Yes, he's only going to be a little kid for a relatively short period of time, so I should probably just enjoy the fact that we're together and that he actually likes having me around.  But it's difficult to have meaningful father-son time when my brain is still producing delta waves: Hey Lil' S, let's play the lie down on the sofa and cover your eyes with a blanket game.

Now, of course, in theory, I could be less sleep-deprived fairly easily, simply by going to bed earlier.  But that's another problem: I can't go to bed earlier.  I mean, I can, of course -- I can physically get into bed at anytime at want -- it's just that it's extremely difficult to actually fall asleep.  No matter how tired I am throughout the day, my body revs up at night, and I never feel like going to sleep before midnight (at the earliest).  If I get into bed any earlier, I'll usually just lay there and be frustrated.  And then even if I am able to fall asleep early for a few days, the first chance I get -- when I don't have to work in the morning or get up with the little guy -- I'll stay up late again and screw everything up.  

I'm not an insomniac, my body just wants to be on a later schedule, and it's hard to convince it otherwise.  I liken it losing weight.  Everybody can be in great shape, if they put in the work to do it.  It's really just exercise and eating right.  (Excluding the rare cases of people with glandular problems or some other medical conditions.)  But the unfair part is that it's different amounts of work for different people.  Some can keep the weight off just by walking to their cars every morning.  And then others have to -- as Will Ferrell once said about himself -- work-out constantly just to be slightly fat.  If you are in that latter group, you might decide that it's not worth the time and effort to be completely fit.  You might be happier being a bit chubby and spending your life doing something other than exercising and eating kale.  That's how I am with going to sleep early; I'm sure I could do it, if I absolutely had to, but it would be hard, and I wouldn't enjoy it.  I'd rather just be tired all the time ... and complain about it.

Anyway, let's move on to the next problem.  This one also revolves around Lil' S.  (It appears as if all my problems involve my kid somehow ... huh.)  Specifically it's his school.  He'll turn three this August, which means he qualifies for PK3, and, as I've come to discover, you are officially a terrible parent if you don't enroll your child in PK3, so we've been looking into this.  It's actually a somewhat complicated process.  Remember the good old days when you just took your kid to the school in your neighborhood and signed him or her up?  Well, apparently, those days weren't so good for a lot of kids, so here in DC we now have the charter school system.  There are a bunch of privately run schools, and you have to put your name in a lottery if you want to go to one.  (Since PK3 isn't legally required for children in DC, we even have to use the lottery for our local public school.)  This means you have to pick out the schools you like online, schedule open houses to see them, and then, if you like them, apply and hope your number gets picked.  It seems a bit much for a kid who still gets a little confused counting past 12, but it's the system we got.

It certainly doesn't help that S and I have wildly different ideas about what makes a school a good school.  Her main criterion is "What's it's rating?"; mine is "How much time is taking him there going to add to my morning commute?".  When you draw the Venn diagram of schools that she likes and schools that I like there is an intersection with only a few elements -- hopefully we get into one of them. 

In general, I'm not sure how I feel about charter schools.  The pro argument is that they given parents options and create competition, so that failing schools have to keep up.  The con argument is that they draw away the best students (those with parents who care enough to apply to the lotteries) from the public schools, thus making the already neglected public schools even worse.  My tentative feeling on them is that they are like Obamacare: better than nothing, but not better than an alternative, but that alternative isn't politically tenable because it is too easy to label it "socialist", and we as the American voting public immediately dismiss anything that can be labeled "socialist", even if it is a good idea, because we don't really think through the issues on which we vote.  If I were king this is how I would fix the school situation: I would enact a law in each state that the best funded public school in the state had to receive the exact same resources as the least funded.  That is, all schools get the exact same resources.  Yes, it would require people "pay" for other kids' schools through their taxes; yes, it would be redistributionist (you could even called it -- gasp -- socialist); yes, I think it would work.

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

*Note: This is mostly a joke.  I don't know if this Scalise guy is really a racist or not.  But I do "love" that if you raise concerns over him once convening with a white supremacist group, Republicans accuse you of "race baiting".  That's one thing I've noticed about many Republicans: when you bring up things that poke holes in their world view, their response is to give you a label (socialist, appeaser, unpatriotic, race-baiter, etc.) without further explanation of why, even if this is true, it automatically invalidates your point.  They rarely actually consider the content of what you say on its own merits.  And they almost never rethink their own views because of it.  It's ironic, isn't it, that the party that loves to talk about personal responsibility and accountability, loses their collective shit when somebody holds up a mirror.  Actually, it's not ironic, just hypocritical.

Entry 266: Happy New Year! ... When Does Daycare Open Again?

The only problem with daycare is that sometimes it closes.

This has been a trying holiday week at the G & G household, and there are still a few days left.  It's weird that I can't wait to go back to work so that I can relax a little bit, but here we are.  Lil' S has been really difficult lately, and I'd much rather sit in a cubicle and debug computer code than listen to his incessant whining.  It's not his fault, of course; he's only two and still might be a bit sick.  It's not like he's purposefully driving us up the wall (it only feels that way), but up the wall we are driven, just the same.  (Plus, every so often, he does something super cute, and it's like, "aww ... how can we be annoyed now?"  He knows when to play the charm card.)

To make matters worse, S is still not feeling 100%, and that stomach bug I mentioned in my last entry finally got me.  It was awful.  I wasn't throwing up, but things were very loose on the other end.  It was my worst case of the runs since India.  The bad thing about diarrhea -- other than the fact it's incredibly uncomfortable and fucking disgusting -- is that it dehydrates you.  And what's more, in a cruel twist of irony, it often leaves you constipated when it's over.  It's like you are freezing in the icy tundra, and then somebody sets you on fire.  (Hey, that would make a good poem.)  You don't get better; you just get a different malady.  And that's what happened to me (constipation, not being set on fire).  I think it's finally over.  I said a nice big, solid puja this morning, if you get my drift.  But things were pretty backed up there for a few days.

Anyway ...

[2015!]

Happy New Year!  2015.  That's insanity.  My life went so slowly up until 1992, and since then it's been a blur.  I went from getting my first pube to going bald in a snap.  There are all sorts of factoids one can relay to demonstrate how fast time has been going (like that we are now in the "future" according to Back to the Future 2).  But here's a weird one that hit me the other day: The Breaking Bad finale was almost a year and a half ago.  I came to this realization looking through some old football highlights, as I remember it was on at the same time as a Seahawks-49ers Sunday Night Football game.  (Sports really are the ultimate time-keeper.)  I remember being bummed that I could only watch one of the game and the finale in real-time.  But then a lightning storm hit Seattle and they had to stop the game for about an hour, and it was almost perfectly in sync with the east coast airing of the finale.  (I don't think there is a God, but if there is, he was smiling on me that night.)  I watched Walt annihilate the Neo-Nazis and die in something resembling peace (spoiler alert!), and then without missing a beat I watched the 'Hawks destroy the Niners and take over the NFC West (another spoiler alert!).  It was a good night.  But in remembering it, the thing that strikes me the most is that it happened in September -- 2013!  A whole other football season ago, and it was at the beginning of the season!  It feels like six months ago tops.

Another, more personal, example of time passage, of course, is that Lil' S is almost two-and-a-half now.  Since becoming a parent, one thing I like to do is read stupid parenting articles that people post on Facebook, even though they annoy me.  Actually, I think it's precisely because they annoy me that I read them -- it's troll reading.  The latest one making the rounds is this one: It's the writer's response to a story about two parents handing out goody bags to the other passengers on a flight on which they brought their young child.  The author's point is that they shouldn't do this because "they’re part of a dangerous trend: People apologizing, or being made to feel they should apologize, for having children."  A lot of my Facebook friends have "liked" this article.  But I have a different take on it.  It's twofold: 1) I don't think there is such "trend", dangerous or otherwise, 2) Who gives a fuck?

On 1), I think there are far, far more people insisting they are not going to apologize for their kids than there are people demanding apologies.  In my experience, particularly on flights, people are very patient and understanding with kids as long as they see the parents are trying their best to minimize their child's disruption (which usually they are).  In my opinion, this "dangerous trend" is mostly in people's heads.  And, the key word, is feel: "feel they should apologize".  If you feel that way, maybe that's on you.

On 2), if people want to give out goody bags to other passengers, complete with a dumb note written from the perspective of a baby -- terrific -- I couldn't care less.  It's neither here nor there to me.  I would never take the time to do something like it, but it's a fine gesture.  As a parent who has flies somewhat frequently with a small child, I'm in no way offended.  And I don't feel pressure to do something similar, just like I don't feel pressure to bake something for my office every time a coworker brings in cookies.  If somebody wants to do something extra, then it's just that -- extra.  It doesn't have to be expected of everybody else.

Also, the tone of the article is really condescending.  The whole article has a vibe of "Silly new parents!  You'll learn!"  I hated the shit before I had a kid, and I still hate it now.  The truth of the matter -- and this isn't specific to the article -- is that we don't know what makes a good parent because we don't even know what a good parent is.  There is no defined objective.  What's the ultimate goal of parenting?  Is it to ensure your kid is happy?  Successful?  Knowledgeable?  Independent?  Fulfilled?  All of these?  What happens when these things are in conflict (certainly knowledge does not always lead to happiness), which one takes precedent?  And are these even the responsibilities of parents at all?

I've thought about all these questions before, and I've never been able to come up with anything close to satisfactory answers.  That's why when it comes to other people's parenting I say, don't neglect them, don't go Adrian Peterson on them, and try not to give them eating disorders.  Beyond that, it's pretty much let your parent freak flag fly.  Do whatever you want to do, even if that entails giving out stupid goody bags to airline passengers when they are babies.  Contrary to what the article says, it's not "wrong".  It's irrelevant.

And ... soapbox dismounted.

Until next time ...

Entry 265: Merry Sickmas

There is some sort of zombie stomach flu going around, and I seem to be the only person not getting it.  I feel like Rick on The Walking Dead.  I think that's the correct analogy; I've actually only seen part of one episode of that show.  S and I started the series, and then about halfway through the first episode, we realized that it really was all about zombies, which neither of us has much interest in, so we turned it off.  I, for one, don't know what I was expecting; it's not like they hide the fact that it's a zombie show.  I did something similar with Game of Thrones.  I watched a few episodes because everybody loves it, and then I started getting confused and annoyed by the story lines.  I couldn't tell why there were undead albinos walking around in the snow, and why a woman was shooting a smoke monster from her vag, and why some people had magical powers and others didn't, and why everybody fought with medieval weaponry despite there being something called "firewater" from which it seemed one could fashion bombs and guns.  And when I was explaining all this to a friend who loves the show, he said, "So ... your complaint about a fantasy show is that it contains fantasy?"  Yes, exactly.  And yes, I realized how silly that is.  It's a bit like going to a baseball game and complaining because of "all the throwing" -- nobody would ever do that.  Well, S might, but nobody else.

[Getting this song stuck in your head is more tortuous than really zombies -- if real zombies existed, of course.]

But the purpose of this entry isn't to talk about TV.  Although, I would like to give that Alex Gansa a piece of my mind for the abject atrocity that was the Homeland season finale.  I don't know what he was thinking.  It's like he was intentionally trolling fans who were finally back on board this season after an unwatchable third season (I literally didn't watch the second half of it).  It's like somebody at the pitch meeting said, "OK, should we tie things up with Haqqani, or should we end with a thrilling cliffhanger to set us up for next season?"  And Gansa responded, "Neither.  We're going to do an incredibly underwhelming season finale about Carrie's boring parents with a punchless, slightly confusing secondary story about internal CIA politics -- that'll show 'em."  Well, I'll tell you one thing, if Homeland doesn't reel me back in immediately next season, I am absolutely going to stop streaming it for free off that shady, offshore free-TV site we use.

Anyway ...

So S got sick Christmas Eve and was bedridden almost the entire day, leaving me to take care of the little man on my own, so it wasn't exactly the world's most relaxing holiday.  It was OK though.  I got in some quality father-son bonding time (he's started doing yoga with me; he tries to imitate the poses, which is super cute), and then after I put him to bed, I had the night to myself.  I would have rather spent it watching bad season finales with my wife, but, hey, free time is free time.  Anytime you get a chance to spend an hour or two watching highlights of old football games that you've seen a hundred times already, you gotta do it, right?

In the morning, we were greeted by a pile of vomit on Lil' S's pillow: Merry Christmas!  I would've preferred a stocking filled with sports magazines and candy like I used to get as a kid, but nope -- vomit.  This wasn't little baby spittle either; this was full-on, stomach-emptying chunks.  It was gross.  He threw up again in the early afternoon, which was enough to get us to cancel our plans to our friends' house for dinner.  The thing is, he was acting perfectly normally, just as energetic as always, but he was just throwing up, for some reason.  I went over to our friends' house by myself for an hour to exchange gifts and have a Christmas cocktail and some h'ordeuvres.  And then we opened gifts with my family over Skype, so there were a few Christmas-y activities, at least.

Actually, it would have been a fine day, except Lil' S couldn't stop throwing up in bed.  He would fall asleep for an hour or so, and then puke and start crying, and we would have to get him.  And not just get him, but we would have to clean him up and prepare the bed again for him to go back to sleep -- all while he's half asleep and bawling and fighting us at every turn ("I don't want you clean me!").  I spent half the night shuttling towels and blankets and clothing (and a few stuffed animals) to and from the laundry room trying to keep everything fresh and clean in his bedroom.  The one thing you can't swap out, however, is the smell.  Poopy diapers can be bad, but I think on the hobo power scale, the effluvium of stale vomit is worse.

The first time he threw up at night, it was a heart-wrenching moment.  He was groaning in his room; not crying, he was making more of lowing sound.  So I went in and asked him what was wrong, and he pointed down to the disgusting egestion in front of him and said, "this."  There was just something about seeing him there, sitting in his own filth, not knowing what it was, or why it was coming out of him, that made my heart drop to the pit of my stomach.  It was such a sad site.

But the good thing about kids is that they have short memories.  (Remember being a kid and one minute you'd be so mad, swearing that you would never be happy again just to teach the world a lesson, and then somebody would mention popsicles, and you'd forget everything and run to the kitchen so that you could call dibs on the grape flavor?)   This morning, he was up like normal.  Eating toast in our bed for some reason, and asking, "Daddy, are you sleeping, Daddy?  Are you sleeping?"  I was, until he asked.

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

Entry 264: Songs and Anecdotes of Christmas Past

Is there a better time to reminisce than the holidays?  Yes, there is -- high school reunions, for one -- but the holidays are definitely in the top-10.  So for this entry, I'm going to relay an anecdote and a song from five ghosts of Christmas past.  They aren't necessarily the best or the most interesting Christmases I ever had -- just ones I remember for some reason.  It's a slice-of-life thing.

1987

In 1987, my parents bought a cassette called A Very Special Christmas featuring various big-name artists of the day -- Bruce Springsteen, Madonna, The Pointer Sisters, etc. -- singing Christmas songs.  I remember listening to it ad nauseum on a little hand-held tape recorded.  This was back when people still bought cassettes, of course (remember when supermarkets like Safeway had a little electronics section where you could buy tapes and videos?), but the more profound difference in musical consumption between then and now is that back then everybody was listening to more or less the same thing.  A Very Special Christmas went Quadruple Platinum, and I remember talking about it at school with my friends -- I was in third grade.  I can't imaging elementary school kids caring about a Christmas album today, not when they can battle each other online with their accessorized avatars and whatnot.

The only other thing I remember from this Christmas is that we made ornaments out of clay, and with the leftovers my dad and I made a weird, gross-looking replica of a human brain that creeped my sister out.  So, of course, I put it in a shoebox, and wrapped it up and put it under the tree for her, "From: Santa".  When she noticed it, she sized it up, shook it, and said to me, "You put that brain in here, didn't you?"  I said I didn't, but the prank was completely spoiled.

1993

This was perhaps my most miserable Christmas.  I was 16, and as you might know, that can be a pretty miserable time, in general -- especially so when you are experiencing your first heartbreak.  There was this girl at school name JP whom I started hanging around with as part of a new little group we had going on.  She was really kind, but also irreverent, mouthy, and raunchy -- the perfect combination for teenage me.

Initially it was my friend JHP who had a crush on her, but then she liked my other friend JY, so it was this awkward, very-high-school love rectangle.  Eventually JHP tired of waiting for her and turned his attention to her more-available friend LN, and they started "going together".  Then JP tired of waiting for JY (who, despite being able to attract girls in droves, was terrible at making a move for some reason).  And that meant I was the only one left.  Perfect.  By the way, being the only one left, is not such an awful dating strategy.  I once heard a guy on This American Life say that anybody can hook up on any night, if they follow two basic rules: 1) Don't give up; stay at the bar until it closes, 2) Significantly lower your standards.

But anyway, JP and I were officially boyfriend and girlfriend for two days before she dumped me sometime in mid-November.  I was still carrying the torch big time at Christmas.  So I spent a decent part of the Yule season driving around in my sister's Chevrolet Cavalier, with no place to go, listening to Elvis' Blue Christmas, and thinking, "This is so me."  

By the way, I'm now Facebook friends with JP.  She got fat.

2002

I was living on the east side of Capitol Hill, in DC, on winter break from The George Washington University, at the time.  My friend DK had lived in Atlanta the past year, but was moving back to Seattle.  He drove up to DC and picked me up, and then we drove cross-country together.  It was a relatively short trip -- I think we did it in four days -- and it was fun.  But 100 hours straight in a confined space with another human being with whom you aren't having sexual relations ... let's just say I was happy when I finally saw the Space Needle the morning of Christmas Eve.  

It looked sketchy for a while too.  We were somewhere in eastern Montana when we hit a snow storm, and had to pull over and wait it out for the night.  To make matters worse, we had just taken these really strong caffeine pills (brilliant, I know) as our plan was to not stop until we reached Missoula, which was still five hours away.  

So we ended up shacked up together in a hotel room with a single bed somewhere near Billings revved out of our minds.  To makes matters even worse, the caffeine pills made DK nauseous, so he was vociferously throwing up in the toilet of our bandbox hotel room.  I remember lying on the bed with my head spinning, unable to even think about sleep, listening my buddy yak approximately five feet from me, thinking, "Dear Lord, don't let me spend Christmas this way."  The next morning the snow had stopped and the highway was plowed.  Maybe prayer really does work.  Or maybe snow flurries are a very common weather phenomenon, and municipalities in places like Montana know how to respond appropriately.  It's impossible to say which.

2004

This was a rare Christmas for which my parents came to the East Coast to celebrate.  I was in my first year at UMD and living in an absolute sty* with four other dudes in Greenbelt, MD.  My parents visited me and then left to see other family in New York state.  I was going to drive up, as well, a few days later.  However, a massive snow storm came through, and I decided not to risk it.  I spent Christmas day completely alone -- and happy.  All my roommates were gone for the first time ever, and I just vegged out on the sofa, drank red wine, and watched college football.  Huh ... I remember watching Hawaii beat Alabama-Birmingham in the Hawaii Bowl on Christmas Night, but that game was actually played on Christmas Eve.  Another example of how sports helps set the record straight.  

*My original place fell through and left me scrambling for somewhere, anywhere to live before classes started.  This place was awful, and I think for two weeks, I lived with an actual drug dealer.  Thankfully -- for lack of a better word -- he got into a minor physical altercation with another roommate who went to the police, and an agreement was reached whereby no charges would be pressed if he (the drug dealer) moved out immediately.

2013

It's weird that I can remember details from a Christmas that happened almost 30 years ago, and yet I literally couldn't remember what I did on Christmas last year.  Or maybe it's not weird.  Apparently, I didn't do much.  I have a feeling this year will be the same.  One thing that is cute though is that Lil' S is learning to sing Christmas songs.  Most recently, I heard him doing a line from Feliz Navidad: "I 'ant 'ish you ... Mare-wee Kwiss-mass."  It's adorable.  Underrate song too, Feliz Navidad.  I feel like it doesn't get it's full due.

Well, until next time...

Entry 263: Tis the Season

Okay, S is out running some errands, and I just put the little guy down for a nap.  Let's see if I can crank out an entry here.  I had to resort to the pacifier to get Lil' S to go to sleep without major protest -- and by "resort to" I mean I gave it to him as soon as he asked.  We've been trying to ween him off of them, but haven't had much success.  (It's mostly on me.  S is better about it than I am.)  The problem is that they work too well.  If he really needs to sleep (or more to the point, I really need him to sleep), and he's throwing a major tantrum, and I have this thing that I know will instantly make him go down (and it's not drugs), how do I not use it?  Plus, yeah, he's getting a bit old for pacifiers, but what's really the harm?  It's not like he's going to be a grown man and using them.  At some point he will stop, right?  I mean, at all the sleepovers I attended in grade school, I don't remember any kid still using a pacifier.  Although, I did know some who still sucked their thumbs.  Hmm ... I wonder if that's related.

Speaking of bad habits, we have another one going with the iPad during meals.  This one, however, is 90% on S.  She was (and still is to a slightly lesser degree) so worried about him being underweight that she would turn on the iPad so that he would zone out, and then she could scoop food into his gaping maw unabatedly.  Now he insists on the iPad every time he eats.  (And not only that he wants a specific iPad.  That's when you know your kid is spoiled.  When he has multiple iPads to make demands about.)  The only meal he doesn't eat with the iPad is breakfast, which, not coincidentally, is the meal I usually serve him.  We justify it by a) knowing that he doesn't get any screen time at daycare where he is most the day, and b) only letting him play "educational" games.  I use quotes because I don't know if these games really are educational or not.  Does a giant anthropomorphic R saying "Ar, ar, ar, ar, ar, ar, ar, ar" over and over, while images of rain and radios and rats flash on the screen, really help a kid learn to read and write?  I'm dubious.  Although, his teacher at daycare told S, completely unprompted, that he is the smartest kid in his class, in part because he knows his letters and numbers pretty well.  So maybe it is helpful.  Who knows?

Actually the incident with the teacher led to a (very) small quarrel between S and I.  She was beaming with pride after it happened, and apparently I didn't give an enthusiastic enough response to her when she told me about it.  So she got annoyed with me, and then I got annoyed that she was annoyed for such a (to me) silly reason.  And that was pretty much that.  The thing is, I am happy that he's progressing nicely, but being a bit ahead of the curve at a very young age doesn't necessarily mean anything.  Kids mature differently.  Plus, I don't want to be one of those dads who acts like his son solved the Riemann Hypothesis because he learned to count to 12.  I'd much rather be the type of parent for whom nothing is ever good enough, so that Lil' S will achieve extraordinary success, but still feel like an insecure failure and resent me for the rest of my life and perhaps act out in inappropriate and embarrassing ways because of it.  That's the dad I want to be.  You know, just like Brain Bosworth and his dad.  (This joke makes a lot more sense if you, like me, just watched the 30 for 30 documentary Brian and the Boz.)

Anyway, in other news, we went to S's office holiday party last night.  It was pretty fun.  For me it was a lot of standing around, sipping wine, nodding my head, and pretending to be interested in a conservation I wasn't really a part of.  The thing about office parties is that people almost always talk about their work (shocking), and the background noise is often quite loud, so it can be difficult to hear people unless they are talking directly to you.  For spouses, this means you only really understand about 60% of what's going on, so it's difficult to contribute anything other than the occasional "yeah", "right", and "huh, how 'bout that?".  It didn't help things that they were blasting the techno music.  Yes, that's right, somebody decided the most appropriate music for a corporate holiday gig in which the average person was 48-years-old was techno. *ootz, ootz, ootz, ootz, ootz ...*  It was giving me a headache, and I thought to myself, "How about a little Bing Crosby?  Would that be so bad?"



To be fair, there was a dance floor, but when they were bumping the techno, nobody was actually dancing.  Later, when they started playing decent music -- Michael Jackson, George Benson, Prince (well, two out of three isn't bad) -- music middle-aged people actually know and think is fun, instead of stuff 19-year-olds at raves would listen to (or at least what I assume they would listen to; I don't actually know much about the 19-year-old rave scene; I don't even know if it is a scene anymore), people actually started dancing.  But at that point, S and I had to leave to relieve the sitter and put Lil' S to bed.

The food was pretty good though -- as was the red wine, of course.  They had all different sorts of cuisines -- pasta bar, taco bar, southern food station (shrimp and grits), sushi bar, and it all looked delicious.  I didn't go too crazy with the food and the drink though.  My body just doesn't like bingeing anymore (sad, I know).  I told myself, "Okay, D, you can stuff yourself silly and regret it later.  Or you can enjoy a normal-sized meal and not feel like shit later tonight."  I mostly managed to do the latter.  I still overdid it, but I didn't overoverdo it.  For example, I only had two desserts, not five.

On the way home, we drove past a miles-long vigil/protest for Michael Brown and Eric Garner.  Hundreds of people, the vast majority of whom were black, lined the sidewalks with candles, held up homemade signs of solidarity, and chanted things like "Black lives matter" and "I can't breathe".  They were peaceful and didn't disrupt traffic.  And I can guarantee you today they were not shown on any Fox News program.

Until next time ...