|
Mantras
Posted 12:17 AM, Dec 30, 2004 |
Two things that are just for me, and thus not so much for you, so read silently and over my shoulder:
1) hey. Hey. Relax.
2) It really couldn’t have gone any better.
|
|
|
|
1 + 1 = 2 (or 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 4)
Posted 6:32 PM, Dec 27, 2004 |
Kids! Everybody loves kids!
While I was home in Duluth (sometime I’ll write something about that time in your life (perhaps see Garden State instead) when home stops being home) I went over to my cousin’s house for dinner. He’s married and he and his wife have twins, both of whom are 2 years old, one boy (Johnny) and one girl (Courtney). It’s as if I didn’t already like kids enough to want all my friends to have them, so I can play with them and not change their diapers.
Or clean up their face after they vomit.
Four times.
Four!
But even after Johnny vomited the fourth time, man, that’s one cute kid. First of all, his sister was all worried because Johnny was sick. She was sitting in my aunt’s lap at dinner and kept asking, after each little tiny bite of food, “Is Johnny okay?” I’ve never seen someone so small so concerned. So Courtney gets a cuteness medal, too.
So Johnny threw up once, and then was running around, all excited, and feeling (apparently) no ill effects.
So Johnny threw up again, and then was running around, all excited, and feeling (apparently) no ill effects.
So Johnny threw up a third time, and it was really starting to get to him. I think he started to get embarrassed, actually. He didn’t want to sit in his mother’s lap at the table, but instead wanted to go in the other room. He wouldn’t look at anyone, either, and was not his previously-gregarious self. I’ve never seen someone so small so embarrassed and self-conscious. So Johnny gets a cuteness medal.
And seriously: Courtney and Johnny? Man. Not names I would’ve picked, but they’re perfect.
So Johnny threw up a fourth time, and he was done. This kid was tuckered out. He ended the night without a shirt, sleeping against his mother’s shoulder. He woke up as people started to leave, and was blowing kisses. (Fortunately, he wasn’t blowing them very far, because they were surely vomit-smelling kisses.) But damn.
Those. Kids. Are. Seriously. Cute.
Even throwing up!
And Courtney was saying goodbye to everyone.
Seriously, those 2 kids, that night, as bizarre as it was, with my Alzheimer-ridden grandmother present, may have made the entire trip worth it.
I can’t really explain it any better than what I said above, and I guess refer to this really indescribable sense of amazement that these little kids, 2 years old, are really just very small people in a lot of ways. I can’t imagine actually having one.
Ha, I was going to say, “I can’t imagine actually owning one,” as if a kid was, say, a Corvette.
|
|
|
|
So, Like, Hello?
Posted 9:32 PM, Dec 26, 2004 |
Yes, yes, I’m still here, alive. Took a few days to go to Duluth and celebrate Christmas, and now I’m back. I’m going to take 4 days next week to go to work, and then 3 days to celebrate New Year’s, and then 364 days after that to celebrate 2005.
Duluth was better than usual, which, you might think, is like saying that a heart attack is better than a stroke. It might be, but that doesn’t say much.
But no, if you thought that, you thought wrong. Duluth was actually a… well, an okay time. But that’s a 4-star review — okay, 3 star review — as far as I’m concerned. Maybe not Best Picture, but I think the trip has a good chance at winning for Costume Design.
|
|
|
|
Neuroses
Posted 9:43 PM, Dec 19, 2004 |
Sigh. Just once, I’d like to sit down on an actual psychiatrist’s couch and see what he could dig up for me.
Yeah, there isn’t a whole lot more to say about that. I’m decidedly vague.
Today’s words of the day: innocuous and enervate. Don’t look for too much information in these words - they just came to mind late this afternoon for no apparent reason.
|
|
|
|
Shapes
Posted 10:47 PM, Dec 17, 2004 |
The thing that’s so frightening, in a word, or maybe just intimidating, in a better word, about first dates is the possibility that, on the day after a first date, it’s possible - unlikely, perhaps, or maybe likely, or maybe, probably, somewhere in between - but it’s possible that things will never be the same again.
This is neither a hope nor a fear, that things will never be the same. It is an intimidation, that hope, that possibility.
See, when I go to work, or when I go out and hang out with people I’ve known for years, or even just months, I can be relatively assured that nothing that will happen will change my life. Sure, I could get in a car crash on the way home from work, or I could meet some fantastic person while my friend Mary is in the bathroom, but the chances of that are remote at best.
Now, put me in a situation where the whole point is that, if things go well, the normal things in my life will no longer be the same.
I’ve evolved, as everyone has, married or otherwise, into a comfortable life. I’m quite used to coming home, watching TV or playing video games or playing guitar, and going out a couple nights a week with friends. These are things to which I’ve grown accustomed.
Everyone knows that when you have a serious significant other, everything else in your life sort of falls away, and the core of your time that used to be yours, that used to be subject to your planning, ceases to be yours. Everyone also knows that this time-giving, this giving of time to another, is an excellent thing, but also that it is a huge adjustment, and divides your life clearly into a new part, a new age.
The Bronze Age, the Iron Age, the Karla Age, the Bethany Age, and so on.
And right now, I’m firmly, comfortably ensconced in the Todd Age.
If you think the potential to be shaken from this age is anything less than comparable to an asteroid striking the Earth, a giant iceberg calving itself into a tidal wave, or a bolt of lightning striking the teeth of a best friend, you’re wrong.
And so that’s why first dates are as intimidating as they are. Overanalysis? Analysis paralysis? Perhaps.
|
|
|
|
Asshole!
Posted 9:41 PM, Dec 15, 2004 |
For the first time in quite a while, I was, in all seriousness, called an asshole! I thought we’d left such things behind in middle school, or high school. Or maybe college. Definitely graduate school, though. But here it is, in the workplace.
Remember when your friends would call you an asshole because you stepped on their patent leather shoes?
Remember that one time you accidentally hung up on your first girlfriend because your sister was tickling you incessantly, and when you called her back she said you were an asshole, and wouldn’t talk to you for weeks?
Remember Nils, the Swedish foreign exchange student who said something to you in Swedish when you asked him if he had ever been to Helsinki, the capital of Sweden? I’m pretty sure he called you an asshole.
And then there was the day you took out 20 staples to make some photocopies and didn’t restaple the appropriate pages afterwards, and your co-worker called you an asshole?
That was, perhaps, the best day of all.
|
|
|
|
Still Catching in the Rye
Posted 2:57 PM, Dec 14, 2004 |
Again, thanks to the fine folks over at Bookslut, which has become one of my favorite reads, here’s more info on those goofballs who are trying to ban Catcher in the Rye.
This article is strange in the details it chooses to mention - the family has, but “considered canceling,” their cable TV. They also run a greenhouse. My thinking is that the cops should check out just what kind of a greenhouse that might be.
I am, however, happy to hear that Mr. Minnon is “now reading Catcher in the Rye.” It’s good to know he’s getting himself educated all good and proper and timely.
But even more bewildering is the failing logic of the Minnon family. They insist they aren’t trying to ban the book, so that right there should throw up a red flag, or at least a red book cover.
Andrea Minnon says, “The more filth we teach [my son and his peers] in school the less chance of having higher standards.” True enough, but it’s too bad that Catcher doesn’t qualify as filth.
But to go back to the other post, my issue isn’t really with Ms. Minnon not wanting her son to read the book - I disagree, but her kid is her kid, not mine. My issue is with taking the book away from an entire freshmen class.
School Board Director Stephen Geller said:
To ask that [Catcher] not be assigned to any student really is basically telling teachers what is appropriate and it’s making the choice for all parents of the other children who would otherwise be exposed to what I consider a great piece of literature.
Makes sense to me. That’s what I’m saying. That’s also one reason I think teaching is a raw deal for teachers. We pay teachers (admittedly not enough) because they have the education and the experience and the expertise to teach our children. We, as democratic citizens, put our trust in school boards to employ qualified individuals, and we implicitly entrust those individuals to educate our children. We should let teachers do their jobs, and we do ours.
Soapbox: It just seems like parents often expect to be able to tell teachers what and how to teach, and their teachers are also being asked to be parents to a lot of kids who don’t get the attention (or discipline) they get at home. The parents are the only ones in this situation that are getting the good end of all this. It’s the teachers and, more importantly, the kids, who are getting screwed out of reading things like Catcher, which is, as far as I know, to this day the only book my father has read from cover to cover. If that doesn’t change your mind…
|
|
|
|
Catcher in the Rye
Posted 11:00 PM, Dec 12, 2004 |
Thanks to Bookslut for this article here about this ignorant blunderbuss of a parent creating all this fustlethrum about my second favorite book ever. This woman should be taken out back and tied up and have copies of classic literature tied to her forehead. It would be like in that scene in A Clockwork Orange where they make him watch all that sex and war and violence to, like, inure him to it.
Side note: I love it when I use a word like inure, but I’m not quite sure what it means, so then I look it up, and it means precisely what I thought it did, and it’s so perfect, and the dictionary smiles on me.
Seriously, they should do that to this ignorant parent. I mean, if you want to be ignorant about your own child, fine, but don’t go ruin it for everyone else.
See, in case you didn’t read the article, she doesn’t want her son’s freshman (high school) class to read Catcher in the Rye, noting that it deals with prostitution, depression, lying, and drinking. Of course, she got all this from Sparknotes. Yeah, I mean, now that she’s filed the complaint and all, she’s actually going to get around to reading the book.
I mean, you can decide her position is ignorant or not. You can make up your own mind. But before you do, let me point out one last fact:
Until her 14-year-old was assigned to read Catcher, she had never even heard of it.
Michael Schaub over at Bookslut said it best:
Jesus Christ. Look, I’m not a classical music fan, but I’ve heard of Pachelbel’s Canon. I’m not a historian, but I’ve heard of Charlemagne. Who the fuck hasn’t heard of The Catcher in the Rye?
|
|
|
|
Alaska in December…
Posted 10:32 PM, Dec 10, 2004 |
… is a dark, cold place. It is also far away from Minneapolis.
But the food is excellent. Halibut, halibut.
I went bowling in Alaska. I’m going to go bowling in every state of the Union.
I did not see any wildlife, unless you count the dead wildlife I ate.
It really isn’t that cold, I suppose. It was 15 or 10 or something the first couple of days, and then 30 or so the last couple of days, so that’s not too shabby.
Shabby.
|
|
|
|
Out
Posted 10:34 PM, Dec 2, 2004 |
I’m off to Alaska starting Saturday, so no telling if there will be a post before then, and there almost certainly will not be one until at least Friday, and then it’s the weekend, so there probably won’t be one then, either.
In short, then, I’m shutting the site down permanently.
Nah, I’m just kidding. I’ll be back sometime. I was thinking about posting a pre-picture of what it will be like in Alaska, and just making it a black square of complete and utter darkness. Ultimately, though, I’m too lazy to actually make that graphic and upload it. Imagine that is what you see here:
This is Alaska at noon.
Clever, no?
|
|
|
|
Rule-ass Kids
Posted 12:44 PM, Dec 1, 2004 |
More and more often these days, I think I want to have kids, which is a funny thing, since I never really thought I’d say that. I wrote a while back about kids ages, like, 5-12, and how they’re cool, but lately I’ve been reading all this other stuff about little tiny babies. The stuff I’ve been reading is more about the parents’ experience and how gratifying, satisfying, and other -ing words (including frustrating and annoying) the experience is.
For example, even Phillippe is having a kid.
There is, of course, dooce.
And there’s also a bunch of fellas talking about being fathers over at The Morning News.
All of these things are pretty rule-ass, and so I suspect having one small child might be rule-ass as well.
|
|
|
|
|
