I hate squirrels

After concluding our long battle with squirrels last winter, and losing judging by the scratching noises we heard about two months ago coming from the attic, I thought that I was done with them. However, upon seeing one a few weeks ago ambling through the trees, I tossed a large stick in its direction, not taking into account the proximity of our car, and it was only by the good graces of a telephone wire that I didn't dent our hood.

Well, despite my idiocy, which I'm famed for in my own mind, I thought that I'd at least have a break from the little squirrels until winter when they'll set up shop in our attic, open an orphanage, conduct school board meetings, and generally make all sorts of scrabbling noises on a Saturday, the one day of the week I can actually sleep in.

We have sunflowers in our backyard. I don't exactly have a green thumb because I think plants shouldn't be such pansies (pansies aside) and should pretty much grow like weeds whether I water them or not. However, we had fantastic sunflowers putting up yet another round of blossoms against our soon to be expunged fence, and they made me happy in the way that only something you have labored on can. Unfortunately, two days ago, S noticed that the flowers had been broken off. "Perhaps the blossom was just too heavy," she said.

"Dammit S," I replied. "Don't talk nonsense. It was that damn kid Dennis." As it turns out, as I discovered the next day, those damn little black squirrels were climbing the chain link fence, hopping onto the top of my flower in an attempt to eat the seeds, and breaking off the top of the stock. At which point, I went outside, cut off the top of the stalks, laced them with arsenic and tossed them in the alley for the squirrels to eat. Needless to say, it's been a couple of days now, and we're starting to acquire a massive stench from the corpses of rodents rotting in our back alley.

Okay, okay, I didn't really lace the sunflowers with arsenic, but give me one good reason why I shouldn't? Remember in grade school how you built that amazing lego castle, or got all of your My Little Pony's in some kind of perfect order that only you could comprehend and then some little jerk came along and kicked it over. Did you laugh it off? Hell no, if you were smart you got up and punched them in the nose. If not, you started crying. Either way, what you were trying to do was make sure that that kid would cease and desist in the future. What recourse do I have? Also, how much do squirrel slippers sell for?

Buying clothes for a little girl.

With the impending arrival of our little urchin we've begun to receive en mass all of the relevant accoutrements. One thing I've learned in this process: girls wear pink. And honestly, I've taken a bit of negative stance towards all of the pink now assaulting our babies dresser. I realize that I need to develop a deep love for pink, make some sort of peace with it in the next two months or it's going to be a long ten years.

Why is it important to embrace pink? Because almost all little girls are bald. This makes it awkward for other people when they are trying to identify the sex of your baby. Putting a little pink bow or a nice pink sweatshirt on the child allows them to feel very comfortable with their own gender. No mess ups here. No stories later in life of looking exactly like a boy and blaming your parents for not having the foresight to just put you in a pink dress and be happy about it. Also, I've always imagined our little girl as bald, mostly, so if she comes out as one of those freak kids with lots of hair I'll probably just lop it off anyway. One of the main pieces of parenting advice that I think I'll hold on to is this, "It takes a lot of work to make a child being born all about you, but if anyone can do it, it's you!" That's the type of encouragement I live for.

Ex:
Baby crying at 2 A.M. for the seventh night running.

S: Will you get the baby?

M: What about my needs?

S:I'll stab you in the eye with an ice pick.

M: A simple please would have sufficed.

I realize though that this whole pink clothes thing is just the last vestige of some boyish aversion to that particular color and that it's time to get over it. It's time for me to accept the fact that little girls wear pink clothes and that it is sanctioned as cute and respectable, and that I should just get used to it.

Anyhow, when I was at Babies R US today, yet again, I tried to buy this little zip up sweater that said little monster on the front, with the accompanying picture of a brontosaurus. I've always thought of the brontosaurus as a peace-loving creature, so I'm not sure the sweatshirt was entirely accurate, but I forgave it because it was insanely cute. It was also for little boys. This occurred after I tried to insist that a blue seat was totally gender neutral and that S needed to stop subscribing to such strict gender stereotypes and color and that her lack of imagination in this category was probably going to contribute to some real significant problems down the road with an exceedingly younger and progressive generation on the rise. Needless to say, we did not buy the blue seat.

So I decided to venture past all of the little monster outfits to the other side of that vast vault of American capitalism, and I was nearly floored by a wall of pink. What choice did anyone have? Little girls wear pink. Here's the trick, I've discovered. You just have to look at each outfit as an individual item, and unless you're Attila the Hun (I realize I'm making what perhaps may be a gross mischaracterization here, he may have been a wonderful man who loved playing Yahtzee with his kids with some sort of modified sheep's bone) you're going to think the outfit is pretty damn cute. However, if you step back, and view the vast horde of pink, blinding panic may ensue. It's important to just stop and look at them by themselves, overcoming that natural sort of shame that you've always associated with wandering around in a land of pink clothes.

And as I looked all through the section, picturing a bald fat girl with chubby arms in various pink polka dot outfits, I came across a little hooded zip sweathshirt that struck my fancy. It was black, with little butterflies along the arm that I thought a good marker could cover up, a butterfly adorned the chest as well, an inoffensive green, and I took it up to the register to buy it. Black is the sort of pink that I could get used to.

P.S. If you happen to have read this and have sent us a gift that is pink, know that S is a big fan of pink, and that babies dressed in black is probably a bit too morbid anyway.

The Internet is for ranting

It's good to multi-task. I read it somewhere on the internet. Listening to music is a good thing to do while you read a blog post.

I said, "I've had a headache for days. Sometimes I can't remember what it was like to not have someone stabbing me in the back of the brain. Can you check behind my ear to see if a little gnome is stabbing me periodically. He might also be eating a ham sandwich.

She said, "Headaches are strange. People, (she may have said scientists, who knows) don't even know what causes them."

"Pain," I said. "Pain."


Vanity

In the evening, before I mow the lawn, I throw my t-shirt on the ground. I decide that I am going to do this thing shirtless. I am reminded that the bronzed skin looks best in deflecting blemishes, and I don't reflect at the time how incredibly insane that viewpoint is in light of our history of skin. Within minutes I am back inside, with five pebble sized bites in the middle of my back. It takes a rare feat of yoga like stretching for me to even scratch them. Before I put on a long sleeved shirt and go back outside I stare in the mirror at the little pink bites on my back.

Napping

At about seven thirty I start to get tired, I feel my eyes slowly shutting like the gate over a restaurant.

"Don't take a nap," she says. "You won't be able to fall asleep tonight."

I close my eyes again. "Just this once," I tell her, "it's going to work out fine."

At 2 A.M. I regret all of the naps that I have ever taken. I swear to myself that I am never taking one again. But 2 A.M. is full of regrets, and eventually I fall asleep on an ocean of them.


Lawn Mowing

I own a push mower because it makes me feel good about lessening my environmental footprint in the world. If you ask me I'll extol it's virtues. "Self-sharpening blades, tight turning radius, no bag, the clippings take care of themselves." Hell, I might even try to sell you mine because it is on Thursday night, when every twig longer than two inches stops the blades and has to be removed, while the mosquitoes land on my back that I regret this mower.

On sighs

Merriam Webster's Dictionary definition of a sigh

1.Emit a long, deep, audible breath expressing sadness, relief, tiredness, or a similar feeling

In a sentence. Jimmy let out a deep sigh of relief after he finished cleaning up elephant poop and getting each one of the items on his wife's extraordinarily lengthy, and complicated grocery list, a list that caused him to have to ask, on three separate occasions, a store employee, whose English was marginal at best, where to find them. And don't even get me started on the sort of day that the store employee was having and the sigh he emitted when he finally got home from work in his un-air conditioned house and sat down on the couch with a cold beverage.

(of the wind or something through which the wind blows) Make a sound resembling this

The wind rushing through the trees, causing lots of devastation in its wake, no less than three power lines down, leaving 4,500 homes without power and eventually resulting in the alleged death of eight people over the age of eighty five who were unable to withstand the heat wave that followed on the storm's heels like a draught of perfume in the wake of some passing woman, and in the middle of this storm children were seen to be gazing listlessly at blank screens trying to conjure up the games that they'd heard that other children used to play in the dark, made them sigh.


Feel a deep yearning for (someone or something lost, unattainable, or distant)

James sighed in a deep and resonant way that Missy, the girl he was kind of dating in the interregnum while his girlfriend was away, mistook for a sign that he was deeply missing that missing girlfriend, and set about haranguing him for the better part of the afternoon, slipping into and out of a thick Midwestern accent, depending on the degree of her anger, an accent that he found incredibly annoying and shrill, when he was in fact not sighing for the long lost girl but for the ocean, which he had left behind years ago, but which he had always missed on Tuesdays like this one: the sky an envelope of clouds and the traffic on Main Street abysmal.

Here is an article about sighing that supports none of the dictionary definitions listed above because it is from a medical perspective and not particularly interesting. Unlike the Wikipedia entry which is tremendous:

A sigh is an audible exhalation of air arising from tiredness or emotion, usually sadness, which itself could be stemming from feelings of sadness or futility. A sigh can also arise from positive emotions such as relief. Some people do it just to cool down organs or suppress emotions.
The word may also refer to:
Sigh (band), a Japanese metal band

My brother has a deep sigh that his wife calls his death sigh. I also have a tendency to sigh in a way that communicates both sadness and futility. And, at the end of my day today I sighed deeply as I left work, so deeply that a person who I didn't even know felt compelled to say, "That was a world weary sigh!"

It must have been some kind of sigh for him to feel comfortable crossing over that barrier of stranger to stranger contact. I'm not a big fan of that myself, and I'd probably hesitate to tell someone they were on fire unless I'd at least had one solid conversation with them beforehand.

Here is a picture of a monkey:

What early 20th century Austrian writers have to teach us about watching football

The neurotic lyrics in this song make it pretty awesome. Who doesn't want to know the IQ of the person they're with, or whether they're going to talk during television shows. Good stuff.


Some quotes from The Man Without Qualities by Rober Musil. Anyone who writes a book for twenty some odd years before kicking off without finishing it, making virtually no money in the process and causing his family to be destitute, is worth quoting a bit. Writing, it appears, despite some people's belief to the opposite, has very little interest in happiness.

"This man who had returned could not remember any time in his life when he had not been fired with the will to become a great man; it was a desire Ulrich seemed to have been born with. Such a dream may of course betray vanity and stupidity, but it is no less true that it is a fine and proper ambition without which there probably would not be so very many great men in the world. The trouble was that he knew neither how to become one nor what a great man is."

Here, my dear friend Mr. Musil makes an excellent point. Why, just the other day I was struck by what a waste my current life is because I'm not involved in politics, which, when one is worrying about nuclear war and helping the global poor et al, seems like the only logical choice. However, that is just the problem, I have this very active mind, which is constantly spinning out scenarios in which things could have been different, but no deep seated interested in pursuing them. I'll lazily refer to it as post-modernism and thus refer to myself as a post-modern anti-hero to make it sound better.

"The inner drought, the dreadful blend of acuity in matters of detail and indifference towards the whole, man's monstrous abandonment in a desert of details, his restlessness, malice, unsurpassed callousness, money grubbing, coldness, and violence, all so characteristic of our times, are by these accounts solely the consequence of damage done to the soul by keen logical thinking!"

Here Musil nicely hits on the advent of the Internet, the increasing prevalence of shallow thinking induced by constant social media updates, the paucity of restraint we see in our current financial system that causes this melt down, except that Robert Musil was writing about Austria in 1913, which had none of these things.

"But on top of this, a horse and a boxer have an advantage over a great mind in their performance in that their rank can be objectively measured, so that the best of them is really acknowledged as the best. This is why sports and strictly objective criteria have deservedly come to the forefront, displacing such obsolete concepts as genius and human greatness."

Musil makes an excellent point. The truly great thing about sports is the pure and decisive conclusion. I could sit at a table with a dear friend and argue for hours, though I'd rather not, whether Flaubert is a greater writer than Dostoevsky, he isn't of course. However, neither one of us could ever be "proven" correct. This sort of conundrum arises nearly every day in our society, ie the financial reform bill lifted our GDP by somewhere between 1.74 and 4.25 percent, saving, by the Congressional budget office's estimation one million jobs, yet, people are still upset about it. Why? because even if those numbers are right one could argue, like myself, that the money would have been better spent on more infrastructure, or that too many Wall Street execs were bailed out. However, if I asked you who won the Super Bowl last year, in no way shape or form could you argue that anyone but the New Orleans Saints did. We could argue about various mishaps along the way, but by a purely quantifiable measurement the Saints won the game.


The same sort of criterion could be applied to any of the major religions, Christianity being my particular choice, but the endgame, death and the existence or non-existence of an afterlife, or the particular quality/make up of that afterlife is disputable until the end as we don't really, Lazarus withstanding, get to return from the dead.

This is all just a very long defense of the inordinate amount of pleasure I take in watching Michigan football games on fall Saturdays. It's not that I love sports so much. It's that I love that they are definitive in a way that nearly nothing else is any longer.

Twenty Things

1 tip to getting a flat belly.

2 ways to change your crabby type disposition to the world.

3 exercises that will get you ripped!

4 simple activities that will make you begin to regard dew on spider webs as something worth watching

5 things to never say on a first date

6 treatises by 20th century philosophers

7 Foods that are surprisingly high in cholesterol

8 mirrors that will remind you of someone besides yourself

9 Fashion don'ts

10 people who don't really care what you're wearing

11 things that people say about you when you're not in the room

12 dresses and or suits that will tell you the truth about who you are. The answer is complex, but the consensus seems to amazing.

13 People who don't like that particular pair of shoes

14 Pictures of people you love

15 Ways in which you will always be a disappointment to someone

16 mornings on a long deck overlooking a long stretch of calm water

17 Meals that you've cooked, which have turned out to be just crap

18 Songs that all say things that move you

19 More things that might contribute to making you more neurotic and self obsessed than you already are

10 things worth paying attention to.


A troubled asset relief program joke gone awry or Tuesday night

S: You better go check to see if that tarp is still working. Otherwise the rain is just going to go straight down into the window well again.

M: I sure hope that TARP is going to keep us from having to bail out.

S: (No change of expression) Because if the wind changes

M: Troubled Asset Relief Program? Anyone? That's what they called part of the bail out package.

S: Really? I thought tarp was just that blue thing keeping the rain out of our window well.

M: When they right the biography of my life I want it to be called, "Andrew Bertaina, genius wasted."

S: Are you headed downstairs to finish watching "Bachelor Pad?"

M: Even geniuses need a break sometimes.

The Man Without Qualities/Six Reasons

Excerpts from Robert Musil's book written between 1921-1942 about the Austrian Empire in 1913 followed by some other things about which I've written.

"Ulrich had talked himself into a state of excitement. Basically, he now maintained, this experience of almost total ecstasy or transcendence of the conscious mind is akin to experiences now lost but known in the past of all religions, which makes it a kind of contemporary substitution for eternal human need. Even if it is not a very good substitute it is better than nothing.."

Later

"In a community coursed through by energies every road leads to a worthwhile goal, provided one doesn't hesitate or reflect too long. Targets are short-term, but since life is short too, results are maximized, which is all people need to be happy, because the soul is formed by what you accomplish, whereas what you desire without achieving it merely warps the soul. Happiness depends very little on what we want, but only on achieving whatever it is."

Later

"Looked at from a technical point of view, the world is simply ridiculous: impractical in all that concerns human relations, and extremely uneconomic and imprecise in its methods; anyone accustomed to solving his problems with a slide rule cannot take seriously a good half of the assertions people make...If you own a slide rule and someone comes along with grandiose statements and emotions, you say: "Just a moment please--let's first work out the margin for error and the most probable values."

Chapter Title.

"A chapter that may be skipped by anyone not particularly impressed by thinking as an occupation"

Six Reasons

1) Your toes. I've never been a fan of toes until now. These days I find myself staying up late at night trying to come up with the proper way to elucidate the mathematically exquisite curve of your pinkie nail protruding from the sheet.

2) The mathematical improbability. If you believe in any sort of multi-verse, and it's fair to say I do, then the chances that the two of us would have met are almost infinitely minute. Couple that with the improbability of life existing on the planet given what we've seen elsewhere, I think it's fair to say that we should probably just stay on for a while, watching the lightning rain jaggedly across the ocean, no matter how many mosquitoes are biting the backs of our knees.

3) Short winter days. Admittedly, the cold bare sidewalks and trees hung like telephone wires are a bit depressing, but I'd like you to remember that on these shortest of days, we are forced indoors, beneath a blanket, our arms wrapped familiarly around one another while the television shines from across the room like a lighthouse in that drowned room.

4) Cups of water brought to bed in the middle of the night and placed on top of a book so as not to leave mark on the wooden end table.

5) John Keats- "I almost wish we were butterflies and liv’d but three summer day — three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain."

6) Long drives. Their is something in me that loves passing from day into night without ever leaving the front seat of the car. We turn off the radio, and turn over conversation like a leaf drifting down in some dream of fall. We wait for small bridges, and quibble about the quality of the sunset, the sky, a masthead of clouds, wreathed in gold. The mind, a cup full of desires and regrets, still eager somehow, for both.

Nine Reasons you may be single

Okay, I'll begin with the requisite update on my duel in order to keep things interesting. Heretofor, I have not received a reply to my very legitimate request for dueling rakes after omlettes. I'd added the omlettes to try and increase the likeliehood that the duel will take place. However, our basement was not flooded on our return from Ocean City. Like most Americans I enjoy grousing about how hard my particular lot in life is, or, at the very least, talking about how things have gone downhill nationally. The hard part about not finding water in your basement, or having someone slight you at work or whatever, is that it really gives you nothing to speak about, no hardships to overcome and thus no interesting stories, or convoluted belief systems structured around the world's general inidifference to your happiness, which, to the best of your knowledge/desire, it should be all about.

Random aside in which the author breaks down an MSN article.

9 Reasons you may be single-My time is too valuable to spend reading the actual article. S has suggested that I become an efficency advisor or logician laureate of the United States in my next job, largely due to suggestions that I'm about to offer up for free here.

Slightly related comment based on speed limits in small towns. Why are the speed limits when you're traveling through small towns on old country highways always lower? Anyone who has seen Deliverance knows that the main thing people in small towns hate is the presence of outsiders. Ergo; wouldn't it stand to reason that the speed limit should actually be increased from say 55 to 75 when a person is driving through a small town and thereby decreasing the amount of time spent ruining that town? It's just logic, plain and simple.

Back to the 9 Reasons you may be single.

1) You are not married or in a relationship. People are going to constantly think that you're single if you're not married or in a relationship. Get in the ball game already. If you're not in married or in a relationship, get in one. This may be the largest prohitive factor when it comes to you still being single.

2) You don't go out on dates. As a non-single person, I've discovered that one of the key components that keeps you single is not going out on dates. Listen, I've been there. I understand that the allure of a four hour run of Bravo reality television and that last treasure in FF14. However, not going out on dates makes it tough to date people. This is all gold here, and I'm giving it away for a pittance.

3) Nine is an obscenely large number.

4) You talk about yourself. In general, the one person in the world who everyone in can agree is the most interesting is themselves. Don't waste time talking about yourself. If someone else tries the same tactic with you, ie refusing to talk about themself and deflecting all conversation back to you it's imporant to swtich tactics, create a false person, speak freely about them, give that person, who should be totally unrelated to you, a good job, and a dog, and a good measure of mental health. Then, at the end of the date, reveal to that person that you just made up all that stuff you told them about yourself, and ask them what they think of it, thus, deflecting the conversation back to them.

5) You may still be single because you haven't read this article about Iran in the Atlantic. Develop an opinion about important things like nuclear capability and willingly accept that it's a necessary part of being involved in a democracy. Insist on keeping your mind flexible and open to the possibility of change.

6) Watch lots of television but then hide that fact.

7) You do not have a bar in your basement. I can't stress how important it is to have a bar in your basement if you plan on not being single. A recent survey of club managers, made up right now, found that 97 percent of them were married or in some kind of relationship.

8) Nine. Really? Come on MSN.

9) You're a misanthrope. Hey, look, as a people moving misanthrope myself, I know it can tough to meet people when your first reaction is to hate them. It generally makes conversation difficult when you already assume you're speaking with a cockroach taking up space. My advice to the misanthropes is to pretend like everyone you meet is an elderly person crossing the street with a cane. Sure you still dislike them, but at least you can muster up enough kind-heartedness to help them across the street and by the time you've reached the other side, and they've told you all about their cat's vasectomy gone wrong you'll probably have figured out that they aren't so bad and that what you had originally mistaken for an old person is an attractive young man in a tasteful collared shirt.

Good luck!

Flooding, dueling and Huey Lewis

When you're getting back on the horse and it's been a few days since your fingers have met keyboard, you need something to bring you back to those familiar and square keys. You need Huey Lewis.



Over the past few days we went through the unfortunate, (though a relatively minor inconvenience compared to Pakistan and to talk about it anymore would not only seem to be, but in reality is, trite. However, we exist on these sorts of exigencies in a global society, and we, ((humanity here)) have always gone about our grubby business of living by ignoring, to our benefit, that which does not concern us directly) business of a flooded basement.

Nothing thrills me more than waking up a few minutes before my alarm is to go off and stumbling down into the basement to find water. This is largely due to the fact that I am the most easy-going and good-natured person in the world. However, even my faculties of easy-goingness were challenged when I had to stand in the pouring rain for a solid twenty minutes whilst trying to discern how water was flowing from behind a brick wall beyond the drain rather than from the top of the steps where gravity and sense would seem to have placed it by rights.

And yes, Lord knows, I do love having a vacant house next to us, so we can have our wild cocaine infused parties until 3 A.M. on weekends. However, my mood is decidedly lowered by seeing our neighbor's roof, clogged with leaves, pouring small streams of water off the top directly onto a thin plastic sheet over my window well. Such water, then traveling down into the well, into my walls, and then into my basement.

Naturally I did what any self-respecting twenty first century man would do.

1) Wrote a letter post-haste using the finest cod liver oil, the only type of material I'll write this type of letter in, challenging my neighbor to a duel on August 27th at sunrise.

2) The duel, dear friends, was moved back a couple of days and a couple of hours because I learned that the sun rises earlier than I'd like.

3) In keeping with my strict Pacifist nature, the duel will be a classic rake to rake combat as popularized during the early nineteenth century garden party riots.

4) I have begun training each evening for my duel by watching a strict regimen of Bravo reality television shows. Thus far, my skills with a rake have not been increased, though I feel imminently more ready to resume my role as a housewife in Washington, D.C.

5) As of yet my neighbor has not responded to my request. I can only assume that he has rarely been in such a state of abject fear that he has been unable to even rouse himself from bed to write a proper response.

The Internet is for ranting

However, today I'm a bit too tired. Ergo; here is an interesting piece of short fiction by Robert Coover. I'm also including a link to an article by a writer who carried a concealed weapon for a couple of months that is also extremely interesting.


I also write fiction

Ending to something:


I want you to know that our goldfish died; I killed him. Our neighbor flips on her light, and I can see across the darkness between buildings. For a moment, I stop writing. I watch someone who is not you, but it isn’t the same. I think about the millions of telephone wires strung across golden fields, the ravens perched on the wires, waiting for something to die, all the wires that run the length of the earth, and none of them are carrying your voice.

So I called you, and I pictured you picking up the line next to your girlfriend, swimming up from the acres of darkness you are buried under when you sleep. I had always wanted to skip with you, but you had left the water with a beautiful arc and flown onto some distant shore I could not reach. I could only call to it from the distance. You surfaced without me.


When your voice croaked, “Hello,” I waited a moment.

I whispered, “I forgive you. I forgive you.”

And when your voice faded into the hum of a dial tone, I hung up and turned on the television. I watched all the people behind the glass living their happy lives, and for the first time in months, I felt myself rising to meet them.

15 things I love

In response to some idiot e-mail by a person purporting to be me about the top fifteen dislikes, and in response to S's comment that it was the best blog that she'd read in a while. Implicit obviously that the content on this particular blog has dropped precipitously over the past month or so. Thus, I'm bringing the rant back to the blog because ranting is what blogs are for. Either that, or posting pictures of your cat in various poses.

1) White noise-I'm not talking about the book by DeLillo, which I liked, but wasn't crazy about. I'm talking about the presence of a delightful fan drowning out all the sirens and annoying college students coming home at 3 A.M. to the Berks kind of white noise. White noise was invented in Leipzig, Germany in the early 20th century by Hans White Noise when he noticed that by waving two construction papers together at the same time he could create a noise that drowned out the incessant racket of his three and five year old children singing along to the Sound of Music.

2)Trains-Trains are the past and the future. Has anyone read Atlas Shrugged and not hated it? Probably not. But Ayn Rand has one thing right in that long ass book, trains are awesome. Trains also give the singularly wonderful ability to write in a journal. If you're married, writing in a journal is great and allows you to properly reflect on your travels and maybe craft it into an essay or a good story to tell friends over a glass of wine. However, if you're not married this is really where a train is going to shine because you also can write in your journal. And then when a young lady eventually screws up her courage enough to ask what you're writing, you can say, "Just some of my thoughts," Or "a poem or something like that." Either of these answers will have her leaving thinking that you're are very deep even if you were in fact just charting out the depth chart of your fantasy football team. Note: Keep stray poems on hand in case you're ever asked to read.

3) People who use big words in every day conversation-I don't find these people annoying at all. I find these people charming. I can't always read a whole issue of the New Yorker but it's nice to converse with people who probably do.

4) Houses that have garages instead of basements-Maybe a personal experience here.

5) Watching rain fall on a body of water.

6) Finding a five dollar bill in a pair of jeans that I haven't worn in a while. I often tell S that it's pretty much the equivalent of making five dollars for doing nothing. Note: It would be better to find 100, but I'm not rolling that high these days.

7) (A special aside of things I don't love because everyone else loves them and fifteen things that I love is way too long of a list. The internet is for ranting!)
Don't Love as borrowed from someone, anonymous, who posted on my blog rant:

"OK I'm just going to put this out there into the universe even though the universe is going to hate me for it: I can't stand David Sedaris's writing. Seriously, I used to read it until one day I read this totally pointless piece about how he was walking through a crowd with his partner and concludes with something about how the last thing he saw of his partner was the back of his legs because his partner always out-walked him. So the whole point of the chapter was to say that he is a freaking slow walker. Well like I care. And I hate slow walkers. Also, I think he is narcissistic and uses foul language for gratuitous reasons.

Whew!! THAT was a rant. I do feel better now, but I think I might go hide from the universe now."

I don't hate DS. However, I think I'm in the minority here with my fellow poster in not finding him terrifically engaging. I guess I just don't function that way. When I read an essay in almost any Best American Essays (Note: Please feel free to pull one of the DS essays out to make me look like a real ass here) I tend to find it way more compelling than (most) of the stuff DS churns out. It's like America decided that this guy was charming and then we built a theme park in his honor and passed his books around and patted each other on the back for all liking this quirky fellow. Except, (and yeah, this may be a personal thing) I go to essays to learn something about the world, and I'm not sure I leave a DS essay knowing anything besides the fact that he's sort of a funny guy.

8) Milk Chocolate with almonds in it. Why? Because as you age and develop a refined palate, (read: dying taste buds) dark chocolate pretty much takes milk chocolate behind the school kicks its ass and takes its lunch money. But guess what? Throw some almonds in that milk chocolate and we've got a solid fight going on.

9) Whales-I swear this is totally unrelated to the fact that I just finished Moby Dick and am reading a non-fiction book called "The Whale." Okay, maybe it's related. Aside: I remember being at this picnic in Santa Barbara when I was 23 and chatting it up with Jamie, (no memory at all of her last name) and thinking what a nice chat it was and decent at this BBQ. Minutes later people came back and said, "Hey, did you see all those whales breeching? Wasn't that some amazing and life changing stuff? Have you ever seen a whale move like that?" And no. I haven't ever seen a whale in my entire life and I apparently never will. However, I will always remember that I wasted time chatting with Jamie, sorry, I usually enjoy chatting, instead of looking at whales, which are amazing.

10) Brownies from a mix? Why? Because almost every kind of brownie doesn't taste as good. (Moosewood excepted). Brownies from a box taste like little pieces of cake dropped from a chocolate cloud or something. Brownies that take a much longer time, tend to taste like some pale imitation of brownies that leaves you feeling oddly depressed, all the while you're complimenting the chef on really nailing the dessert this time around as you politely spit the remainder into a napkin.

11) People who are willing to have their mind changed by an interesting conversation. This applies to books and movies, my sort of thing, but it should apply across the board. There is nothing less interesting than talking with someone who already has their mind up, unless they are really intelligent and persuasive, in which case, the above listed quality doesn't really apply. In a broader sense I'm just saying interesting people who have read, watched, lived, thought out enough of life to be a good conversation partner.

12) The Bachelor Pad. Why? Because a man can't spend all day reading Moby Dick and looking up the Wikipedia entry for phenomenology, sometimes that man has to watch a bunch of young and ridiculous people cry and hook up, so that the can feel good about spending the evening mopping the floor.

13) Homeless people. Why? Because at one point in my life I was a intimately involved with a number of homeless people who had both fascinating and heart-rending stories that still make me feel bad every time I walk by one of them and do that thing where you look away to avoid making any sort of eye contact or contact of any sort.

14) Standing at the base of a waterfall? Why? Because I'm human.

15) Infinite Jest, Arrested Development, long drives, vast swaths of virtually empty land, the ocean in the middle of the night as viewed from the shore, being married to someone who can do logistics, listening to pretentious podcasts, long talks.


In the same vein as the things I hate blog, feel free to post your comments below on things you love. I realize it's not nearly as fun as posting on something you hate as human beings (on average) remember a negative comment ten times longer than a positive one, but I'd always be interested to hear. Hell, I know some good poets, and the above text had a lack of poetic or Amelie like things. Change that!

It's probably time for some Owl City.

The American Dream or why basements are terrible

There is no sight so wonderful to a man returning home from a day at the office than a refrigerator full of spilled milk. While the saying, there is no use crying over spilt milk is apt, I think the latter half of the phrase is left off when one is using it in the hearing range of children, said ending, being: but it's probably worth a few f bombs particularly if it got in the vegetable drawer.

Well, no sooner had I finished pulling everything out of the refrigerator and using an entire paper towel roll to sop up the milk that I decided to go down into my basement. We had started the day with a violent thunderstorm, and I was curious what shape the basement would be in. Well, no sooner had I reached the half-way point on the stairs when I noticed Kevin Costner riding a strange boat and shooting the first scenes of Water World Part 2. This caused me a bit of distress, particularly since I think he was so great in Field of Dreams. So, I went back upstairs, pulled my old wet suit from CA down and headed into the basement.

Basements were invented by people on the East Coast during the late 19th century for the express purpose of conducting Roman arena like boat wars. Unfortunately, this fact has remained largely obscured to your modern home owner, mainly due to some misguiding by the real estate agents of America, who encourage you to set up your home entertainment system down there, and generally behave as though it is a fine room and not what it is, a great place for a small aquarium.

The basement was also clearly invented by East Coasters because they are a cruel lot, still enraged by the long winters that they have forced upon themselves, the cruel absence of that grandiloquent western sky leaves their souls, a bit pressed in. Such a lack makes a man or woman do something downright dirty like digging out a basement willfully ignoring, like Icarus the sun, the water table you are near to standing on by the end of the project. Oh cruel easttern folks. Why?

Naturally the grand dam and I spent the evening exchanging barbs, not good naturedly I'm afraid. The spirit is a bit too crushed when one arrives home from work to find Noah proved right, and the proof of it sloshing about on your bottom floor. I could go on for hours, lamenting the ill make of mops at CVS and Target, but what would be gained by that? No, enough of this not has already been lost to sopping up milk and water. It is time to wash myself anew with sleep.

Scenario: An argument about cupcake batter

Entirely neutral scenario as presented by the handsome and intellectually engaging author...Do you see what I did there? Dear S or N or whatever, let's call the person hypothetical, may have been making a batch of cupcakes whilst I was tenderly engaged in the saving of Spira in that grand old series that Wolf Trap honored this year, Final Fantasy. Whence I arrived in the kitchen to partake of the spoils I was told that I could have one.

Aside: Why is it that women (gender specific, yes) make batches of things like cupcakes and cookies and bars of gold, only for other people's birthdays, work events et al? Why doesn't a man (gender specific though you know I don't mean it) ever sit down and think to himself, I love my (insert sig. other here) so much, I'm going to make a batch of cookies. No. This never happens. Rather, S, and others of her ilk, make whole batches of food for droves of other people but never for the good and tender husband. Why? It's obviously some sort of obscure punishment handed down from the times of Genesis as a reminder that the apple should have remained uneaten, or should at the very least, have been given to a red-tailed hawk who was celebrating his 32 that day.

Anyhow, before I took a bite of that luscious cupcake I went over to the mixing bowl to partake of the wonderful batter. Test: Did you immediately think a) Oh gross! That cupcake batter is full of raw eggs, (despite the fact that you, and the rest of the known world eats cookie dough for like weeks on end despite the raw eggs, again, not judgment here, just a fair and square question) or b) What a fantastic idea? I know that Cold Stone has cake batter ice cream that tastes wonderful, and I bet the cupcake batter was even better.

If you selected b, you are correct and smart and probably good looking. Anyhow, at the table, I decided that I should frost my cupcake (and yes, at this point I didn't realize that the batter was actually not cupcake frosting, and I kept telling S that I was going to frost the cupcake come hell or high water, my exact words, and she kept saying, "What frosting are you talking about?") with the batter.

I ask you friends, if you have had a taste of heaven, dost thou not desire more? Is it so wrong to want to partake of something as good as cupcake batter? Nay, to bathe the cupcake in that from whence it came? Is heaven itself not a reuniting of the body and soul with its proper place. So too, was the joining of cupcake and batter.

Naturally as I told S of my plans she grew increasingly horrified, even going so far as to take away the bowl of left over cupcake batter before my cupcake was properly dipped. To me, this is an offense that should be punishable by death. I commanded her to apologize or risk the biblical wrath of being swallowed whole by a whale. However, failing that, I tossed the cupcake at her, and she caught it in her outstretched soapy hand, proclaiming the cupcake, now ruined. And friends, you will not believe this; she described the whole episode as disrespect and a thwarting of her will. That I should so brazenly waste a cupcake and risk life and limb eating delicious and nutritious cupcake batter.

While I, quite rightly I might add but won't, perceived the whole act as unjust. Here I just wanted to dip my cupcake in the fountain of goodness, and my will was thwarted. Woe to thee who thwarts the will of a man trying to partake of raw eggs. Woe to thee who regards the consumption of cupcake batter somehow beneath them despite eating loads of cookie dough. Woe to anyone who denies that if cupcakes are made for the feasts on earth, cupcakes dipped in cupcake batter are suited for the banquet tables of heaven.

Here is an extraordinarily long piece about DFW for anyone who has read his stuff.

Dinobots!!!!

In response to the article in the Huffington Post, the fifteen most overrated authors, I've come up with my own list that people can peruse at their leisure of the fifteen most overrated authors, books, states, or states of mind.

1. Goodnight Moon-What a banal book. Don't waste your time saying goodnight to the moon because it won't say anything back. You're actually wasting your time speaking to a planetary satellite that will never respond. If you want to talk to something idiotic that won't ever change just buy yourself a damn dog.

2. Haruki Murakami-People, even folks I like, really enjoy Murakami. I don't enjoy his writing because it is a kitschy pile of horse manure with some cats rolling around in it. I'm not sure when America became obsessed with magical realism, but we took a wrong turn with this author.

3. President Clinton's incident-You know what's a lot worse than having an affair for our President? sending thousands of young men and women to war. Why can't we have any f-ing moral outrage about that people!

4. Dentists-When were these guys invented? Humanity was getting on just fine without them. And I bet no one felt the need to spend thousands of dollars on making a picture perfect smile. F verisimilitude. I wish I had had a friend growing up called crooked teeth Johnson. I didn't because of dentists.

5. Montana-Yeah, it's beautiful and all that but the winters are too long, and they have too many bears. Do you know what's dangerous? Bears.

6. Slightly distracted by something else that could have possibly popped up on the Internet-This state of mind needs to be done away with immediately. The internet is not your friend. It is an insidious chip planted by the government in our heads to make us pay for all those free loading poor people.

7. Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee. One of the worst books I've read in the past few years it was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award. Besides poor dialog he cheaply capitalizes on the difference in perception between life in South Africa and Western Europe. Oh, so they are different and that is sometimes challenging? Thank you J.M. Coetzee for sharing that with us. The biggest disgrace is that in our increasingly pc society people pretended like this pile of manure book was worth a damn because it was allegedly about cultural conflict.

8. Vuvuzelas-Just plain awful all the way around.

9. Two and a Half Men-Why is this show still on television? It's constant good ratings only confirm my overeducated and underemployed snarky bias that the majority of Americans are dull and insipid even in their television watching.

10. Freeways-Get a clue America! Let's put in some f-ing high speed rail! Move to the city and stop whining about your taxes and your gun rights. Of course, I'm only saying this because I have a liberal bias and my wife works for the EPA.

11. Shark Week on Discovery-Do you know why I quit surfing in CA? Because of sharks, the deadliest and sneakiest animal on the planet. What's hanging out beneath all those placid ocean waters? Probably like a million sharks. Do I then want to watch them attack people or other animals? No. I do not. And just because Discovery advertises the shi- out of it doesn't mean I like it. I'd watch Dinosaur week. Why? Because God created dinosaurs so that liberals could throw their presence in Christians face, but also because he loves awesomeness.

12. Long internet rants-I don't give a damn what you like and dislike. This is America! I'm free to have my own loud and uninformed opinions without you invading my space with all of your....oh, awkward.

13. Omar from the Wire. Guess what? I haven't seen the Wire and I don't know who the f Omar is, so stop talking about how you saw Omar from the Wire on some television show and how that makes it good. I don't know who Omar is, and I don't care to find out.

14. People who don't believe everything that I believe-Come on! Resistance is futile. Okay, it would probably be a really boring world.

15. Liking things on Facebook-Guess what? I do this all the time. But it's a lazy as- way of communicating with another person. You want to like something? put, I like this, in the comment section. You're not that busy, you're on f-ing Facebook already, don't pretend like you don't have the time to do more than click a random little button. Where is the dislike button, or the I'm confused button or the...(Editor's note: I liked at least on thing today but that just proves that I'm a jacka-s like everyone else).

16............Feel free to put your own rants in the comments section like: I hate Marigolds! Or, Haruki Murakami is the greatest, and you just don't like him because you are too lazy to put commas in the correct places! Or, I hope Omar from The Wire rides over to your house on a shark and bludgeons you to death with the moon. Don't be shy. Everyone loves a good rant.

A List: House Project Helpfuls

1. Always start with the biggest drill bit when making a mark in the wall. Remember, you can always make a hole smaller.

2. Remember to sweep the back steps every weekend so your basement doesn't flood. Sure slugs the size of garden snakes live back there, and so many varieties of spiders, which you hate, that you sort of shiver during the whole process, but trust me man, like most things in life, it's going to be worth it. The latter half of that previous sentence was almost entirely untrue. Most of life's seeming "achievements" turn out to be ephemeral and sort of shallow in any long lasting sort of happiness. It's not even clear whether this is a bad thing.

3. It's important to swiffer the floors. What is a swiffer? I don't know. However, I do know that once you have a house with hardwood floors that it becomes vitally important to obtain a swiffter and talk about the virtues of said swiffer in dialog with other hardwood floor owners, going so far as to claim that you can't imagine your life without a swiffer, just to induce some laughs, though really, you do mean it. Life without a swiffer is troubling.

4. Buy lots of things like picture frames and television mounting items but never use them. Keep saving these projects for other days in the future. Continually whine about the pictures not going up but make no effort to do it yourself. Write a poem about how it's hard to be you. Don't show it to anyone. Change the narrator's name, hell, make it a female name so no one will recognize that it's you in the poem whining about life's dissatisfactions on a couch while someone else swiffer's the floor in a brisk manner that can accurately be described as monomaniacal.

5. Tout the virtue of totes. Wait for Home Depot to have a sale and buy like ten of them. Say things to your friends like, "You can never have enough totes." But mean it. Own the words. Don't mess around when you're talking about totes because if those spiders scare you off some weekend and the back steps don't get a good washing, you can bet your bottom dollar you will be pretty damn thankful for those totes keeping all of your goods safe and generally mold free.

6. Label the totes with marking pens. Complain about the off brand type of Sharpie. Write a poem on the couch about how it's hard to be alone on the couch while someone else kneels in the next room and writes on totes with an off brand Sharpie. Learn to despise totes for no good reason. Continually suggest the virtue of styrofoam boxes, never spell it correctly. Bring home one of those old styrofoam (tough word) coolers from the grocery store and start storing old photos in it of you and some girl you had a crush on in fifth grade. Mention that the styrofoam cooler is going to keep those pictures in good shape. Hide the styrofoam box.

Stuff

Link to an essay about language

The best magazine articles ever article

A fine article in gourmet

Yup

Some highlights from the week.

M: So I had to rewatch the first ten minutes of the Sopranos because she was putting up a mirror in the bathroom.

J: I hate watching those same ten minutes a second time.

A: Wait. You're complaining because your pregnant wife was putting up a mirror in the bathroom while you watched tv?

M: Listen, she wouldn't have been hanging the mirror if she didn't want to. Besides, she wouldn't have wanted me to help anyhow. If I did it myself, I'd have just hung the damn thing sideways anyway and called it good.

Some other time:

C: What are you here for? Is that a bear you're growing or are you just planning on becoming homeless?

M: I'm just trying not to look too strange while I'm growing out my mustache.

C: Oh. That's not a great idea.

Fiction

A list, greatly abridged, of the reasons that my closet is empty.
1. On the date, November 2, perhaps the 3rd, you were kindly asked to remove visible marks of urine from the rim of the toilet seat before company arrived. Upon using the toilet at 7:37 P.M. I discovered those self-same stains on the seat despite being told on two separate occasions, once in the kitchen, and once on the balcony, that the seat had been wiped clean.

2. June 23rd Despite being made aware on several occasions, including a shared Google calendar, you showed up at 7:37 P.M. for a party that was scheduled, in your honor, for 6:15 P.M. The accompanying waste of food and goodwill went unremarked for several days at, which point the incident was called “unfortunate,” and I was asked to, and I quote, “Stop getting my panties in a bunch.”

3. July 4 On this particular date, you, the defendant, were asked to refrain from using fireworks in our back yard due to potential fire damage and the unnecessary emotive pain that I associate with fireworks do the nub that I have where my right pointer finger should be. The latter of which, should have put you off fireworks for years. However, the defendant, in full view used no less than three legitimately hazardous and or dangerous items in our shared backyard. At this point in time the defendant, you, told me to “stop being so crazy about something that happened years ago.”

Without a doubt the single funniest thing I've ever seen about badminton. Well worth the three minutes.

An ode to George Washington

A few centuries ago when good Old George Washington was having quality wigs made in the likeness of good old Cornwallis, he decided to lay down a city wit the help of L'Enfant on the banks of the Potomac. Many of the great cities lie on the banks of rivers and Washington no doubt sought to emulate those magnificent European cities of yore. And for that simple fact, the notion should be applauded. Why not put down the nation's deepest roots near the place where the good old Pilgrims and Quakers and the like first made landfall.

Here's why not. Washington DC is a swamp George Washington, is what I would have told him, perhaps via a dueling glove. And if we put a city down here it's going to be infernally muggy during the summers. Of course Washington could counter with the winter spent in Valley Forge and a reprimand that would amount to, "buck up soldier." Except, one would then be forced to remind the dear fellow of the vast multitudes of mosquitoes that dwell in swamps.

Swarms and hoards, in such numbers that they overwhelm man in a way that the great predators bears and mountain lions were never able to do. By sheer force of numbers they are the rulers of the earth, and in a place like DC during the summer, never is that ruling class made more evident as my legs catch fire after only a short five minute span of sweeping sticks. Nay dear George, let's put the capitol someplace distant from all these swarms of tics and mosquitoes, from the infernal racket of those bird sized cicadas. Head west dear George as the pilgrims of yore, let us put all those bites and malarial dreams in the rear view. Why then, dear friend, I'd not be toiling away in my yard, shirtless to avoid giving them the pleasure, whilst being bitten fifteen times each ten minutes.

Instead, Dear George, I'd be living out West, watching the slow break of the ocean on empty beaches. We wouldn't allow them to be overrun by condos out there George. Perhaps, perhaps we'd have tucked the capitol away in a fertile valley, encircled in summer by golden grass on rolling hills dotted by live oaks. Couldn't you just see the two of us out there my friend? Sure we wouldn't have the chance to cut down cherry trees, but who the hell cares? Their beauty lasts but a fortnight, withered and gone, like the women of southern Italy.

And I know the wigs would be made of an inferior quality. But we could opine together over the loss of craftsmanship, Dear George, the queer failure of each successive generation to live up to the last. We could do it over a tankard of ale while the ships landed on that wild coast out West, tamed by Cortes and the Spanish five hundred years ago. And after a round of three we'd forget the wigs all together and make merry with that endless sunlight, not colorless and cruel as Herman would have us believe. Neigh, it is life, we might say, tossing together our glasses and slapping the wenches on their, I jest, Dear George, I jest. Is that not acceptable between friends?

And if you insist on making the capitol in this land of peat and low lying land. Why, I don't think it would be too much to ask that on a Saturday, one of those distended mornings, where the heat hangs about you like a quilt, and you have to push through the day and clouds of mosquitoes, all eager to show you the power of their lips, that you, Dear George, should make like good Old Lazarus and emerge from your silty grave to lend a hand with the mower. Why, my wife could even make us fresh squeezed lemonade. I'd supervise from inside, my friend, I've discovered, like you, that my talents are best suited for overseeing, and your bleached bones besides, you have to admit, would make poor fair for the most plentiful denizens of this wretched capital.

I promise you though, if all goes well with the lawn, we'll spend the afternoon making ships to put in glass bottles in the dark. I'll strip off my skin, my bites, my weakness, we'll sit next to one another wearing only the faint outlines of what's left behind between lives.

Babies R US round 2

My second trip into the land of babies was not as harrowing as the first. I did not immediately start tipping over strollers or turning them about in the aisle as if they were Nascar racers. Nor did I fail to set the break and make myself appears as an inept future parent. No, this time around it was a bit easier.

Firstly, we jetted through the middle section that we'd avoided previously. Why? Because when confronted with baby shoes even the hardest of the hard hearted is immediately overcome by warm and fuzzy feelings that make them question everything. Unfortunately I kept picking out little boy shoes briefly forgetting that we are, in fact having a girl, a girl who would no doubt defame me later in life if I put awesome Nike shoes on her at birth instead of the little pink bow that helps people define the child's gender in that early and awkward bald phase.

We escaped the little shoes section, well, S did, I was still extolling the virtues of the Nike cross trainer on an infants development as a runner while she had already departed for the crib section. Before purchasing the crib we sat down in gliders. Why gliders, you ask? Because rocking chairs were for the previous generations, we can improve on anything they'e done! Though, admittedly the gliding, if done in too hasty of a manner gives me a mild case of nausea. Thus, the first thing I set about doing in a gliding chair is having it rock gently. Anyhow, as Stephanie bartered, (I assume that's how they do it at Babies R US) a few pregnant women and I idled away the afternoon on our gliders discussing the ins and outs of foot swelling and back pain.

During the course of time that it took the clerk to take our order, in excess of twenty minutes, apparently he was the sort of fellow who asked you if you spelled your last name (Bertaina) with two q's, I strolled around looking at bed sheets. Pink and purple are out because those are sexist colors, clearly. If my graduate education has taught me anything it's that gender roles are all bad. Thus, I settled on a little Pooh Bear set because I'm a fan of the great stoic philosopher Eeyore, probably one of the seminal cartoon characters of my youth, a fellow companion in arms and not like that mincing piglet always wining about the garden, or slow Pooh so concerned about honey, or that idiot Tigger. Egads! Anyhow, as all of those lowly characters would be adorning the bedding I think we're going with something simpler.

Our mission at Babies R US complete we headed over to Target and spent a great deal of money on cleaning supplies. Question? Is there anything in the world less interesting than purchasing cleaning supplies? I mean. I had no idea that they could cost so much, mind you, we were buying a lot of different products. It's just that I was raised in a good and proper home, so I don't clean. I consider picked up to be clean. I've been told that there lies a chasm as great as the Mariana trench between picked up and clean, and this trip to Target taught me that. While I wearily dragged around behind Stephanie, trailing in her wake, occasionally departing for brighter shores, bringing back various t-shirts held up like flags of surrender that she quickly derided before heading back to the world of mop and glo or orange and glo, or back to nature and glo, or whatever. My goodness what a cost we pay in time and money to keep nature at bay. I should think we'd be just as happy in a cave or a tent with time to idle or philosophize as we would be peering at our reflections in a finely mopped floor, but perhaps I'm wrong. I'm at least out a chunk of change.

Fiction

The phone rings and I answer it like my mother by saying, “Yes,” pausing for a while and then saying “Hello.” My mother doesn’t answer the phone that way anymore because she’s gone batty. Now she yells, “Who is it?” increasing her decibel level and consternation each time, until a nurse reminds her who I am. Janice is on the line making sure that I’m doing okay, that I don’t need a bowl of chicken noodle soup or some Saltines. She is so unremittingly nice that it makes me hate her even more. “Oh heavens, I say, channeling my mother even more, “you worrying about me when you’re so close to your due date. What a sweetheart.” And every time she asks me if she’s looking fat or if her baby is going to be cute and healthy, I tell her that everything is going to be fine and that her baby will be wonderful and healthy and I say that her husband probably loves her lustrous glow. I say all sorts of things that I don’t mean.

When Janice and I are done talking Jason steps out on the balcony to smoke, and I sit down at the computer to look at pictures of people I used to know. It is strange, to be able to pass through their lives in minutes, as if I am a train and they are an old ghost town, watching their hips widen in seconds, and their husbands lose their hair. At seven-thirty they are getting married and by seven thirty-two they are throwing a themed birthday party for a chubby three year old who looks nothing like his father.

The thing is though, the three year old may not look like his father, but it’s clear that he’s having a really great time and is so pleased to have two wonderful and supportive parents who know how to set good boundaries and also encourage him and balance that with a good knowledge of knowing when to stay firm, those parents.

In every picture, I do the same thing as everyone else in human history. I scour the picture trying to find myself, to see if I’m in top form, if the camera has caught my good side. And if it’s a particularly good one of me, I might say to your friend, “I like this one, the composition is really nice,” vaguely pointing to an off kilter poplar and hoping that my friend doesn’t notice how good I look. And I am so used to pictures of me that the absence begins to feel more real than my presence here, and I end up clicking on a picture of myself, and starting at it for a minute, wondering what kind of parents I had.