Birth dates

It's probably time to discuss possible due dates. Thanks to the moderns of medical science people can now schedule a C section to give their newborn child the perfect due date. However, due to pressure, probably from ridiculous liberals and no good dirty hippies, women now feel that they should have their baby "naturally." Thus, we're left trying to guess at the perfect due date rather than accepting that we live in the greatest country that's existed since whatever Rome was devolved, likely due to an inability to tax their large populous effectively, tax cut people beware, the people from Gaul are likely to rise up if we don't keep this big ship called the federal government running. I demand chariot races, and charts!

October 31:
Score 5

Why? You get to tell your child that everyone dresses up for their birthday every year and that they are incredibly special.

Negative: Our child will eventually become old enough to know that it's not actually an advantage to have a birthday shared with every other little Joe and Kathy on the street.

Additional negative: 21st birthday. Halloween + drinking age=possible disaster even with the best of parents.

Additional Negative: She'll be unlikely to have everyone over for a sleep over on her birthday because everyone will just want to go home and eat a sack full of candy or razor blades or whatever moms warn their kids against in apples these days.

Additional Positive: Perhaps saving a bit of money on her birthday will allow mommy and daddy to save some cash and go on an adult vacation to Europe or South America or something.

November 2

Score: 9

Why? Because this would allow mother and daughter to share the same birthday.

Positive: This would finally put an end to those complaints from S (well at least one of them) about how not enough was being done on her birthday, and she damn well doesn't understand why men think birthdays aren't such a big deal when they are. And what did you plan? Nothing? Really?

Positive: I only have to remember one birthday for my two girls. This will allow me to save at least one additional part of my brain to remember some obscure sports fact like that Anthony Thompson won the Doak Walker award while playing running back at the University of Indiana.

Possible negative: Two girls complaining at double the volume about the inadequacy of the plans for their birthday, which they can't really be held responsible for, it being their birthday and all.

November 12

Score 8

Why? Because it's the due date

Positive: It's a Friday. This will allow me to maximize the sick days that I can take from my job.

Additional positive: An on time arrival bodes well for my future as it's already a pain in the as- to get S out of the door on time. Perhaps I'll have a little timely helper!

Positive: I don't give a damn what anyone says, that's the day I picked in the family pool. Do we win a live turkey to cook at Thanksgiving or what? I'm unclear on the rules.

Negative: In order for her to be a famous artist she should do something outside the norm, being born when you are expected does not help her in this regard.

November 19

Score: 4

Why? Because S can't put her socks on anymore.

Positive/Negative: She'll finally be in the world but probably have a really weird shaped head from being overly large upon exit.

Negative: I don't know if I can take one more week of S pulling up her shirt and telling me to look at how big her belly is. Yes, I know, I've seen it ever day for the last nine months thank you very much.

Negative: This sort of late behavior is uncharacteristic of a Bertaina and does not bode well for future trips anywhere.

Positive: She won't be a small baby by that point. I'm afraid of little babies. Please be at least seven pounds.

Streets....

Today, my netflix account started recommending movies that were Critically acclaimed, suspenseful and cerebral. If they'd just add a fourth category to the recommendation I'd feel comfortable about what I was watching.

Ie: Gritty, gutty, critics watched this movie, brief nudity.

Ie: Documentary, typical thing you dirty left wingers like, probably will reinforce views you already have, kind of a good movie to make out to.

Ie: Slasher, suspenseful, people will do inexplicable things that will likely get them murdered, why do people like movies like this anyway?

Ie: Family, This movie has a dog in it, at some point the dog is going to die and probably some people will learn about mortality and you might cry, stop crying!

Ie: Silent, boring, when was sound invented?, based on a critically acclaimed novel by Willa Cather

Ie: Heart-wrenching, based on a fairly pedestrian effort from Nicholas Sparks, some old people are going to remember loving someone when they were much younger, also it will rain.

Ie: Action, probably some explosions, also a good movie to make out to, barring that, watch it with some of your friends and make fun of it.

Ie: Retread of a movie that only gets worse each time we try and retell the story, I mean, why can't the Matrix have only been one movie?, women in tight clothes but fairly caricature like roles, probably a good movie to turn off halfway through and go take a look at the stars.

Ie: Cartoon movie, We're probably going to face some adversity that will be overcome after learning a little bit about the individual but also ourselves writ large, this movie got like 87 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, just like every other cartoon movie excluding those one's that obviously royally suck like Alvin and the Chimpunks 2, which was live action anyway when you really get down to it, inspiring.


I love greatest hits episodes of old blogs on xtranormal

Yup

The truth of the matter is that none of us were happy that summer. For a while, Jackie insisted that she was, but we later came to understand that she was defining happiness in entirely the wrong way, if it is fair to say so. Besides which, she was sleeping with an older man who wore expensive watches. She had nothing in common with any of us anymore.

Okay, it's probably not fair of me to say that all of were not happy that summer. James was working as a trainer in an old boxing gym, teaching kids off the street how to land a proper jab. We all knew for a fact that James didn't know shi- about boxing, but these kids didn't know any better, and who were we to blame him for being caught up with the idea of a better version of himself as projected by these kids. Something about this relationship between perception and reality seemed vitally important. None of us knew enough about boxing to be able to tell by the end of the summer that James hadn't become a really good trainer. Though, to be honest, we watched one of his little charges get his ass handed to him, losing by TKO in the second round after taking a series of left hooks to the head that left him floored until the eight count and on his feet but not on this planet by the time the ref called the fight. Afterwards, we took the kid, who turned out to be a little shi-, and we almost felt sort of bad that James had put so much stock in these kids opinions, out for ice cream and he tried to touch Jackie's breasts.

The real point is that we were all unhappy for causes unknown. Sydney had gotten into a motorcycle accident in the spring, and, as a result, she'd ended up with her jaw wired shut for the better part of three months. And you wouldn't believe the sort of things we'd all say to her knowing that she couldn't answer back, just turn beat red and stamp off way down along the beach where a bunch of druggies hung out beneath the bridge. And she'd pout down there for hours, to no avail, trying to get good and high off second hand smoke before she came back to glare at us all.

We were, most of us, in the early part of our twenties working at dead end jobs in retail stores and public libraries stocking books, waiting for the summer to be over, so we could forget that we were supposed to be making something of ourselves. Those days that last forever gave us all too much time to think about the positions we were in, and the failures we were fast becoming. Laura would usually bring cigarettes and those of us who smoked would cup our hands in the wind against the wind and toss the butts into the ocean and not one of us even dared to try our hand at a metaphor.

Derek would usually bring just enough beers to leave us all disappointed that there weren't more, and we'd occasionally make a camp fire and try and keep the smoke out of our eyes while we bitched about the people we wanted to love us the most. When we grew bored and our eyes were all stinging from all that damn smoke from the wet logs we'd put together we'd talk about whoever hadn't come that night, speculate about the sorts of things that could keep them from our nightly funereal engagement. And that's what it was, I now see, way before the thing with Jimmy, which, I suppose, was perhaps preordained after all those ashes had burned away, and we were left with the bare light of the moon on our ageless faces.

Date Day 2010/Fantasy Football

I would like to thank the good people at Target for providing a never ending fount of capitalist blessings to my family. It's really quite a treasure trove of a place. I mean, walking around Target with your head on a swivel, dodging moms pushing a cart with a baby strapped in while trying to manage a three year old who is pulling items off the display rack, is a real thrill for me. I find nothing more thrilling about my American citizenship than being able to walk into a bastion of free market competition like Target, so that I can purchase a whole bunch of stuff that I kind of want but probably don't need.

I don't know how many people have been in a Target and Babies R Us on the same day regularly of late. However, I'd like to note that the children in Babies R US seem almost infinitely more well-adjusted and cute. Is this a socioeconomic thing going on or just dumb luck? I'm not really privy to differences in the two stores pricing structures. Perhaps it's the sheer volume of crap available in Target that gets the kids overexcited, diagnosed with ADD and put on heavy doses of ritalin. I'm not really sure. However, if you're a parent, I recommend taking the kids to Babies R Us and then letting them sit in the car with the window rolled down to a proper level while you peruse the amazing dollar deals at the front of Target.

S and I embarked on our last big date day before the arrival of our little bundle of joy. Firstly, we woke up late. S took a shower while I lay in bed waiting for the room to warm up in a cocoon of blankets that I've taken to bringing to bed after she commandeered virtually everything else on the bed including like six pillows in an attempt to maintain some modicum of comfort in these latter stages of pregnancy. As it turns out, our room didn't warm up.

Thus, we headed downstairs together to make breakfast! For those of you who haven't made breakfast in a while, it is not easy. Thus, we decided that for date day we'd rather just have some cereal. Edit: I wound up eating some bacon in the microwave. Date day was off to a rousing start. It was at this point, in what was truly going to be an epic date day that S decided that we'd be attending church. To be honest, nothing says date day like some qt down at the old DC CRC. I think that's a gang name or something.

Anyhow, we continued date day by going to church and singing some hymns and praying some prayers and stuff. Then we went out into the vestibule or whatever, or causeway? or whatever, and had some nice snacks made by someone else. Nothing says date day like eating food prepared by someone else. Eating a couple of crackers and a piece of celery on a thimble sized paper plate made date day go from amazing to whatever is better than amazing.

We then went back into church and sat through an hour and a half congregational meeting where a number of people were highly displeased. This displeased us because it was our date day and here we were sitting amongst a big group of angry people. Even though the energy in the room was a bit exciting in a visceral way, I felt that taking to the streets and firing a trash can through someone's window would probably dampen date day for S.

We went home to try and reinvigorate date day. Unfortunately, in the midst of preparing to head off to Sugar Loaf mountain I realized that I had made a mistake in pulling Hines Ward out of my starting lineup for fantasy football. If you've never made a late switch to an underperforming player, (Chris Ivory) than you probably can't understand the kind of mental anguish that I was in, which is to say, a lot. After about the fifth time that I mentioned how good Hines was doing S asked me why I made the switch in the first place, which, as you can imagine, sent me into another wave of remorse over all the poor fantasy football decisions I'd made in the past. Making a mistake like this is akin to switching Baking Powder for Baking Soda in baking.

All of the remorse over my terrible decision made me want to take a nap. In the meantime, S was celebrating date day by writing thank you notes to people for our baby shower gifts. After a couple of hours of me randomly checking on seven games at a time to see whether Kenny Britt was still available S and I took date day to the next level. We went for a walk to take care of our friend's cat. Going for a walk with your pregnant wife is sort of the epitome of date day. It having been decided at this point that a romantic trip to Sugar Loaf was nothing when compared with a date day trip to buy diapers and a stainless steel trash can.

Anyhow, on the way over to the house, the sun was shining, and all was well in the world. Except that S was wearing those silly shoes that girls wear nowadays that aren't really shoes at all, but like little ballerina shoes that don't give the feet any support at all and that really look like they should be accompanied by a tutu. Not Desmond. I'll be here all week. Don't forget to tip your servers.

Date day really blasted off when I attempted to take a nap on our friend's couch while S tried to coax the kitty out of the bathroom where it was rubbing its head against the toilet, apparently deciding that cold porcelain was more appealing than either of us. On our way home we cut up Sheridan to eighth and admired a few single family homes, high quality gardening, and solid fences.

At home, I went down into the basement to spend more qt with Jay Cutler, (four interceptions? I mean, I could have started Ryan Fitzpatrick, how do you do this to me Jay?) and remorse. After a while S, who was probably engaged in some sort of productive activity this whole time like creating an excel spreadsheet of our future monthly expenses while baking vegan corn muffins from scratch, lured me back upstairs for a trip to Target.

Our trip to Target gave us some new insight into how great date day 2010 could really be as I argued with her about wanting to take a trip to Italy next summer. Apparently S thinks a savings account is for saving money while I thin it's just some disposable income for trips to Europe. As it turns out, these two separate views of finances don't exactly jive perfectly. I think we finally settled on traveling overland by wagon train to cut costs.

And, as we entered our second Target, the first Target didn't have the trash can we were looking for, and let me tell you, nothing gets me more excited than driving fifteen miles out into the burbs looking for a trash can, only to discover that we need to drive even further out to another Target for that stupid piece of metal that I could have had for thirteen more bucks at our local Ace. Our ratio of purchases to time spent was sitting at about 1 item purchased for every hour spent shopping, at which point in time we entered Marshalls.

As it turns out I love Marshalls because it has all sorts of cheap crap that I don't quite need, but on a good day, could probably talk myself into buying. Purchasing makes date day feel special, but we left without anything. Curiously unfulfilled. Finally, at our second Target we expressed ourselves a little bit economically.

M: This trash can is going to change our lives. I think this is finally the purchase that is going to make us happy.

S: Move it along.

In line, we briefly discussed our enjoyment of mint M & M's before taking date day to Babies R Us. At this point I blacked out, and date day really became a blur until I came home to find out that Anquan Boldin had had a really solid second half and that I might actually win despite my poor decision making involving the benching of Hines Ward. Suddenly, date day 2010 didn't seem like such a waste after all. S and I curled up and watched a little bit of Michael Moore's fair and balanced movie on Capitalism before I headed upstairs to spend some qt on the computer checking to see if Randy Moss was going to get me one more touchdown while S read a baby book until she fell asleep. Yes, date day 2010 had been a success! I'm up forty four points in fantasy!

A public service announcement

The internet is for ranting. This is for anyone who shops at the grocery store. People who walk are accepted from this public service announcement because they are good and environmentally sound folks who need to talk down to the rest of us. Now who wants to go drink some oil!! Sorry, I got a bit off track there.

Anyhow, I don't really give a damn if you have sixteen items in the 15 or fewer lane or if you forgot your canvas bags. I'm an easy going guy. The one thing you can't do, and I mean this people, I'm about to start doing some internet shouting, you cannot, I repeat cannot, take for-damn ever when pulling out of your spot in a big city. Why? Because you've got a line of about fifty cars behind you who are at the end of their work day as well, really the people in the cars more than the cars themselves, who are pretty damn eager to get the car parked and pick up some cheap soup so they can head home to watch banal television shows until they fall asleep and push the rewind button.

Ergo; I don't care if you can't find your lip gloss or coin purse or third child, when you approach your car with a handful of groceries it is your job to pull out of the spot in under thirty seconds. I don't know how many times I've watched somebody put their foot on the break and then sit there for another thirty seconds doing lord only knows what while I wait for them to actually back up and hold up a group of about seven cards behind me who are probably plotting how to kill me, in this case I do mean the cars rather than the people.

Things I don't care about.

1) If you are checking your cell phone. You have plenty of time to do this while you are handing the nice man your ticket, or driving slowly through the parking lot. Laws are made to be broken, check those voice mails on the road.

2) Texting. Texting is, other than on rare occasions, a debased way of communicating information with each other. STFT and get the heck out of my spot!!!!

3) You can't find your sunglasses. Like my old high school teacher Mr. Needles used to always say, "A lack of preparation on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part." I don't remember anything else any of my teacher's have ever said. The point is, get yourself organized or learn how to drive with a bit of sun in your eyes you bastard!

4) Anything related to putting all of your wallet and crap in order. You can do all that crap on your time before you go inside your house to your loving family. Don't waste my precious time.

5) Anything else besides the few exceptions listed below.

Things that are okay

1) Strapping a baby into the car seat. This is acceptable for obvious reasons. I may even smile at you and nod knowingly about the rigors of putting kids in a car seat. Also, hurry it up, so I can get some bok choi.

2) Having an octogenarian as a passenger. Let's be honest, I'm not sure what this word means, but it can't be good. I don't expect people to help hustle people who can break a hip into the car for my convenience. Unless that person is in relatively good shape in which case I'll be fuming while someone in the store picks up the last on sale Odwalla.

3) You are a student driver and it is your first trip out in D.C. Although, you've got to learn somehow, so back the f- up and let's get this show on the road.

And look, I'm not saying that my time is more important than the person who is pulling out of the spot at a glacial pace. I just want an equal respect thing. When I'm at the grocery store you can bet your as- that when I get in my car I high tale it out of there. Why? Because I want to respect other people's time.

In conclusion, the whole purpose of this post is to accelerate the speed at which you exit your parking spot in the grocery store. Take a stop watch, time yourself, if you feel like you're going too slow, you probably are. Try tossing the groceries haphazardly in the back seat. Imagine that your husband or wife will still love you without lip gloss. Assume that the person behind you is actually on fire and the parking spot is the only nearby body of water.

Alternatives to the problem:

1) Walk. This is the way most of us should get shi- done if your country wasn't so stupid in terms of transit oriented development.

2) Public Transit. "Public Transit, it's not just for poor people anymore!" I pushed this slogan for a while but WAMATA turned me down, partially because the ending was, "Okay, it still kind of is."

3) Hover board-Somehow we'd invented these in the mid 80's, I think we've all, regrettably, seen Back to the Future 2, how is it that they haven't reached the market? I blame our liberal, read communist loving, president.

4) Take a queue from our eastern brothers and develop some patience and calm. Spend that time in your car calmly meditating on the beauty of that sliver of sky available to you beneath the parking garage's roof and wall. The main problem with this method is that getting angry and contemplating honking is way more fun.

5) Build shops that are underwater. These would completely preclude parking spaces, and, like Georgetown, we wouldn't allow any public transit to come to our watery kingdom/store because even mermaids don't like poor people.

6) Develop a sense of humor about nearly everything and apply it liberally.

This was a fun way to spend the evening. My favorite is the soccer players

Citizenship

I'm just going to include a little story recently published in the Atlantic by a reporter who traveled around for a bit in Afghanistan with some troops that I think should pretty much be required reading for any American over the age of 18. The story is basically a firsthand account of fighting in the war, and it's pretty much just an apolitical look at what it means to send people into war.

I think that one of the chief things we're asked to do in a democracy is think. And I think that it's impossible to think without having all of the information at hand. For instance, if you think you want a less intrusive government that lowers taxes even more, go ahead and advocate for it. However, don't do it by claiming our taxes are too high when they are at the lowest level that they've been since 1950. If you want to say that you don't like the stimulus bill, fine, I have my issues as well. But don't say that it didn't work because economists across the board pretty much agree that it helped prevent the recession from deepening by a significant amount. If you're like me, and you want to treat our country being at war as an abstract philosophical concept, read this article to get a little taste of what it means to send young men to war. If you want to oppose the Muslim cultural center near 9/11, by all means, oppose it, but don't oppose the mosque when it's actually a cultural center, and while you're at it, make sure to get rid of the peep show places and porn video stores around the 9/11 site as well; we don't allow that kind of crap in my version of America.

Here is an essay that pretends to be about lobsters but that is really about thinking and democracy, and in general, being a human being.


For a long time I've been writing you long letters and using words like diegetic, which mean things that I don't understand. I've said things like, I've always admired the peculiar shape your fingers take on the keyboard below the soft blue light of the computer or that I've missed the shadow that forms beneath your clavicle on the island of your skin. I asked you to sing me something where the point was the feeling, not the words; the truth is, I didn't want to understand any of them. I wanted to slip softly beneath the space that lies necessarily between two bodies. Just once, can you lie to me long enough to say that you understand? I promise, if you stay long enough, that I'll believe you.

South Lake and Facebook

Because sometimes things are pretty funny. The video below, though funny, does not represent the views or opinions of any writers, thinkers or editors of the blog.



I wrote and performed the listed song in around 1998 but as it turns out I'm not talented, so I sold the the rights to some English lady. When you get right down to it, the preceding sentence pretty much sums up my life.



You awake after five hours of inglorious sleep to the smell of bacon.
M: "It's like God put a little piece of heaven right inside a pig, and he's given us the ability to cut it right out and eat it."

S: Theology isn't always your strong suit.

Because you have brought flags and a strangely child-sized football, you spend the morning complaining about the fact that you won't be playing football that day. Sometime before noon, breaking a rule I might add, you start drinking rum. By two o'clock you've won several games of pool and downed a solid portion of the Captain's drink. Your friends are playing a game of Scrabble. Secretly you've always known them to be nerds. For a while you toss the football back and forth in the house over lamps and through rafters, in just the sort of way that gives every mom nightmares. In fact, that's one of the first memories you have of your spouse, her telling you and your friends to stop tossing the football in the quad. Clearly, she didn't know how accurate you were with a football. Eventually you convince a couple of your friends to go outside and toss around the football. On one of your first throws you want to prove that you've still got it so you zing a tight spiral twenty yards to your friend. It is at this point that you begin to suspect that you might have torn your right labrum as well. You gun a few more across the cement to prove your worth before retiring inside with an aching shoulder and elbow. Someone else is going to have to play football with your kids.

By two o'clock most everyone is playing poker, so you take a nap. It is a point of pride that with you that you don't play poker. You don't even know the rules. Playing poker is like learning about drill bits or how to cook a delicious Thanksgiving dinner, something you'd rather not know. You sleep for a couple of hours then call various people in your family and talk to them about work.

Outside, a few evergreens cast long shadows across the street. Without even walking outside you can tell that the air is crisp. If you had to live life over again, you're fairly certain that you'd sleep more. By four o'clock everyone is done playing poker and you have the run of the house to yourself. For a while, people climb on rafters like monkeys for no explicable reason. You start to climb up but then climb back down because you're going to be a father soon and safety is no accident.

In the early evening you drink some more rum and coke. By this time the booze has no palpable effect on your body, but it appears to be in the process of burning a whole in your esophagus. Some time passes in which really nothing much happens. Eventually everyone heads down to the casino and you watch a couple of your friends play craps and blackjack and secretly wish you had way more money, so you could partake as well. However, you're going to be a father soon and financial safety is no accident. It is at this point that you burp and discover that the hole burnt into your esophagus from the rum and coke has created something akin to the sulfur smell when Old Glory erupts. Your friend, who is well on his way to becoming a doctor, cowers away in fear.

At the blackjack table some people win money and some people lose money. We debate the merits of telling wives about substantial financial loss via text or phone. It is decided that the best method is just to exaggerate the cost of the lodging to make the gambling losses seem smaller. Really, it's why you've always liked being friends with smart people, great ideas like that. At the craps table a couple of your friends win money while occasionally heckling poor rollers. The whole process looks like a hell of a lot of fun if you're winning money.

At the end of the day, you don't have some scathing critique of the casino, you only slightly think something like "no wonder they hate freedom; it gives you slot machines." Later on someone receives a return text from a wife saying something along the lines of, "It doesn't matter how much you lose, I'll still love you." You're pretty certain that no such text would be headed your way if you had done more than pay the 4.50 withdrawal fee to take out forty bucks that you didn't gamble. Casinos are strange but so are human beings.

Let's play Trivial pursuit

On the first night in South Lake Tahoe we did what any self-respecting group of relatively (relatively) young men out in the world would do: we bet twenty bucks each on a game of Trivial Pursuit. It's a shame that they put the word right in the title as if pointing out to you already that things should probably be going better for you. However, I was setting sail with my dear friend Captain Morgan and was unconcerned about how incredibly dorky it is to bet on Trivial Pursuit.

Query: Who said this?


Living in dreams of yesterday, we find ourselves still dreaming of impossible future conquests.

a) Charles Lindbergh
b) Christopher Columbus
c) (The exact quote escapes me but was something along the lines of, "If I fall asleep I die, if I succeed I'll be a demi-god." Note: note a very accurate paraphrase here. How I let myself get talked out of Lindbergh with that quote is beyond me. Columbus had to sleep, it took him like....an amount of months to cross the Atlantic.

Discuss.

Query: During WW 2 the French wore what color pants to give them added flair?

a) red
b) scarlett
c) Those are the same two colors, how could your "friends" have not credited you for coming up with red.

Discuss.

Which beverage makes a game of Trivial Pursuit more fun

a) rum and coke
b) whiskey and sprite

Discuss.

What makes a game of Trivial Pursuit more entertaining

a) A one minute time limit so you don't have people taking fifteen minutes to answer the damn question and then coming up with something like South Africa when the answer is clearly Nigeria.

b) Betting. Betting makes everything more interesting/sinful.

c) Playing the game with people you love.

d) A and B as c is obviously a bunch of crap.

Query: If a child (over the age of two and a half) is crying on a plane and kicking your seat do you

a) Politely point it out to the mother

b) Move seats while pointedly glancing at the mother

c) Ignore it and flag the stewardess down for some rum/whiskey

d) Pretend to go to the bathroom while awkwardly taking your book with you and change seats at that point in time.

Query: Is having true empathy caring about everyone in the world or just those you love or that are close enough to care about? Wouldn't a truly empathetic person in the first sense, be racked by sorrow on a daily basis?

Query: If you lose twenty bucks at a game of Trivial Pursuit do you?

a) Call your wife and tell her you lost twenty bucks playing Trivial Pursuit.

b) Text your wife telling her you lost twenty bucks at Trivial Pursuit

c) Call your wife, mention nothing about the game, and just add an extra twenty bucks into what you're telling her is the total cost of the weekend trip.

d) Who cares what you tell her, you know you're going to win that money back anyway.

Discuss.

Query: The people in Pakistan are (apparently, checking NPR sources) so upset at the U.S. that aid workers are afraid to accept goods emblazoned with the United States flag for fear of reprisal. Is this

a) A ridiculous reaction and just one more way in which the United States is so often thrust in to a no win situation. Damned if you do and damned if you don't.

b) The sort of response that you should expect when you routinely drop bombs from drones that occasionally take out innocent people.

c) Further justification for said bomb attacks because you're damned if you do and damned if you don't.

d) A little more complicated than a small quiz allows for.


Query: If you board a plane and are sitting in between the two youngest children on the plane. Should you

a) Immediately request a seat change

b) Wait and see if the kids are well-behaved

c) Pull out a large book and try to pretend to read while listening to the mother behind you be an awful parent.

Question: Who did Abu Bakr succeed as Caliph?

A) Mohammed

b) I can't believe my idiot friends came up with that I thought they were going to go with Aladdin or something.

Question: What woman's visage was carved on a wall in 6,000 B.C.

a) A long discussion ensues about when humanity officially became humanity or Eve.

b) At some point I come up with Nefertiti and feel like a genius

c) Betty Rubble. To which, I have to say bs anyway because even if I had thought of the stupid Flinstones I would have said Wilma rather than Betty.

When in Reno

I recently spent a little bit of time in casinos near Reno, Nevada, and I think it's safe to say that no one should ever spend time in casinos in Reno. If ever you wanted to stir up some populist rage about poor folk scamming the system; you should probably take a trip to Reno. Reno, the biggest little city in the world. My new motto would be: Reno, the place where old white people come to play slots with their oxygen tank.

There is something decidedly strange about a casino at 5 A.M. that is not accidental. When I arrived in Reno at 1 A.M. (four A.M. EST) I got on a bus to my hotel and chatted with the driver.

Driver: You're from DC huh?

M: Yep.

Driver: I've tried to go to the Washington Monument a couple of times, but I never could make it up. Of course, I shouldn't be surprised, they can't get anything done in that town anyway.

Welcome back to Reno/Northern CA where the liberals are scarce and the topography is beautiful. The driver and I kicked back some ideas about things to do in Washington, though he seemed intent upon telling me about his misadventures with the Washington Monument.

On the drive up to the cabin I watched fractured sunlight fall on snow capped peaks. As we all know, the mountain air smells a bit cleaner as a result of being, well cleaner.

When I checked in to the casino/hotel that night I walked around the bottom floor for a while, trying to find the check-in. I avoided asking the short-skirted steely eyed waitresses carrying trays of drinks through the smoke filled rooms to geriatrics plugging away at quarter slots, women, who looked like if they'd been given a chance would as soon knife you as give you a drink. (Later on in the weekend we actually saw a good looking casino drink lady and had a spirited discussion about her ages. The guesses ranged from 28 to about 37, which should give you a clue about the amount of make-up that is pretty much the standard in South Lake. And, in part due to good judgement, we didn't put money on her age and ask her outright as I suggested on at least two occasions. Even in Reno, some things are still considered uncouth).

The casino is designed to disorient you. It took me at least ten minutes to figure out which way to go. The lady at the counter listened to my tale of hardship and woe with the sort of smile I hadn't expected to see.

L: Oh, that sounds terrible. It's four A.M. for you. We'll get you right up to bed.

I almost asked her if she wanted to be my mother but I think our ages were too close. Behind me a blond guy, red enough in the face to be at least partially drunk and his sweating girlfriend waited impatiently for Lord only knows what. In my room, I came across two queen-sized beds, perfect for a person sleeping alone. I walked into the bathroom and palmed the shampoo and conditioner. (Upon my arrival home I proudly announced my theft to my spouse, who informed me that such "theft" is not in fact theft, but a perk of staying in the hotel room. My childhood did not involve a lot of vacations or fancy Reno hotel rooms, so the concept of free shampoo and conditioner still eludes me).

I was too tired to put the do not disturb sign on the door or maybe timid. I have a habit of strange timidity when it comes to things like that. I regretted this decision when at 9 A.M. the next morning a woman with a Spanish accent asked if anyone was in the room, and I made what I hoped were convincing just being awoken noises. I believe I may have said something like "What?" in the sort of parched voice that most people associate with the morning after benders to connote the degree to which I was confused about the intrusion. I've no earthly clue what it's like to work at a job where you routinely walk into a room where other people are sleeping. Sleeping, it would seem to me, is deeply private, which is why it's so interesting to watch people sleep on a plane, watch their faces go slack and drool, and regardless of the degree of the attractiveness of the person sleeping they tend to look sort of foolish, probably due to the whole sitting up without leg room. The exception to the rule is obviously babies or very small children, who have a tendency to look angelic even in the strict confines of a plane. I've put the age at which a child ceases to be cute sleeping on a plane somewhere between seven and 10.

Some things that I'll probably always have questions about

M: (Noting that in Jon Hamm's ((Don Draper)) appearance in 30 Rock that he has long hair) How come Jon Hamm can have that haircut, but I can't?

S: Well, he is Really handsome.

M: I hope you understand how I could interpret that comment as hurtful.

We spent a good portion of our Saturday waterproofing our fence. Like most Americans I grew up with those famous Thompson's water sealer commercials that made you afraid to use an inferior product for fear of a gate that won't shut in the future.



Yeah, that's right, if you're somewhere between the ages of 22 and 56 you've been brainwashed into believing that Thompson's is the only way to seal a deck.

Store Clerk: I've got this deck sealant right here that's about forty bucks.

M: Is it Thompson's?

Clerk: No.

M: Then get it the hell out of my face!

We spent about a solid hour at the hardware store following this bemused store clerk around and asking him random questions about door handles, deck sealants and sprayers.

M: Do I look good in these work goggles?

Clerk: Uh.

S: Please tell him yes.

M: Thanks. I like to look good out in the yard.




As it turns out the store clerk was lying to me; Goggles make me look like a jackass.
One of the worst things about being an adult is that you always have something you're supposed to do. If I could switch places with my baby I would. Think of all the years of irresponsibililty that she has to look forward too!

M: Would these look better with a utility belt of some kind?

Clerk: (Turns to S) You're going to want to use this apoxy.

M: A pox on both your houses. Mercutio anyone?

S: So I just need to blend the two.

M: Not if Hotspur has anything to say about it.

Clerk: (Moving away)

Anyhow, after we finished bedeviling him with our charm and lack of knowledge about deck sealant I put on a feet of strength by carrying the five gallon can to the car without complaint.

M: I have a torn labrum.

M: Could this weight anymore.

M: I want you to remember this the next time you tell me I don't to do anything.

M: If I had known this was how life was going to turn out I'd have just stayed in limbo or dead or whatever.

S: Is it that heavy?

M: Not so much for my biceps, but it weighs pretty heavy on the soul.

M: Also the biceps.

After arriving home I quickly assembled the sprayer and began pouring the sealant in. Okay, S quickly put together the sprayer while I haphazardly poured the five gallon sealant onto the porch steps because I was in too much of a hurry to realize I could pull out a spout and apparently thought that the best method would be to just slosh that crap in there. When that job was finally done I commenced spraying the fence in an aggressive manner and watching the sealant coat the ground at the bottom of the fence.

S: Did you put down the tarp?

M: I just figured I'd waterproof the ground around the fence to make it safer.

A couple of hours later we'd completed a good portion of the project and were feeling pretty good about our ability. However, we realized that we hadn't shaken the sprayer around in a while and that the sealant was too thick. As S read me the directions I deftly turned the sprayer upside down and accidentally depressed the sprayer, managing to coat S's ungoggled face in water sealant. (Thank god we bought the off brand. I'm pretty sure Thompson's would have killed her).

M: You should probably go wash up.

S: You just sprayed a pregnant lady in the face with toxic chemicals.

M: I'm just trying to get you to stop crying.

S: What?

M: Is it too soon to joke about this?

After a solid four and a half hours we finally stopped trying to put crappy off brand Olympia or whatever on our fence and went inside. And you know what I learned? That it sucks to use water sealant on your fence because it appears that you've done nothing after four hours of work; the only thing that brings me joy is to watch those old Thompson's commercial and know that we'd done a good thing.



Okay, I'll grant you that that particular commercial had nothing to do with sealing a fence. However, it made a great impact in my life as a youngster, falling somewhere above the television show Alf, why did he eat cats?, and below the theme song from Gummy Bears.




I guess what I'm really getting at here is, don't grow up. That kid should have lied about the baseball because now he's headed for a life of sealing fences, buying strollers, worrying about mortgages, 403 B's and how the Nikkei is doing on reports out of Australia that criminals are no longer buying Toyotas. (Sigh).

More about fences and popular baby names

As S and I stepped into the backyard (now covered completely in shadows because of our giant fence, the vegetable garden in our heads was already on its way out) to take stock of our new backyard, dead sunflower stalks, bits of detritus tossed over the fence, a few random cinder blocks from Lord only knows what, a large depression in the center of the yard that may or may not have been a drain or the burial place of a beloved pet, we concluded the only logical thing: we made a huge mistake.

Buying a fence, I learned, is like making eye contact with the prettiest girl/boy you've ever seen in your life, or at least within the last hour, and then finally getting up enough courage to walk across the room and talk to her/him, only to learn, stunningly, that that person, who you've already given a Nobel Peace Prize to, or at the very least, a decent sense of humor is incredibly vapid. And now you have to do all this sort of backpedaling and either a) noticing minor defects about that person, like a mole that you had confusingly thought was a beauty mark, but that from up close is really more of a marring of some sort, a sign, that if you'd been able to see it more clearly, that this person was not for you or b) start having that same conversation that everyone has been having since some sort of standards about beauty were formed, about whether someone so incredibly good-looking is deformed in some way by those looks because of people always catering to them, and finding them funnier or more interesting purely because of the looks, and then they've got this sort of gap where most other folks learn to insert some type of personality. That's what a fence feels like right after you get it.

Names debate continued:

S and I have pretty much settled on a name but for some obscure reason, (one can only assume bizarrely religious) S has concluded that if we tell the general public the outcry will be so great that we'll be forced to change the name and admit that we're already failures as parents. Anyhow, because she's taken so long to finalize the whole name thing I'm starting to try and push for some other names before we get the end of the race. My brother has already taken one of the middle names that we could use and using the same middle name as someone else is pretty much the same thing as lighting a bag of poo on fire and putting on their front porch, or so I've been told.

Ergo; the name that I'm really pushing for, (mainly because I had a really great and sweet grandmother) is grandma. No one can convince me that the best way to honor someone in your family isn't to name them after them. And, for most of the time that I knew my grandmother I pretty much called her grandma. Ergo; I think the best name for our little girl would definitely be grandma. Note: A quick search of the social security web site shows that grandma has not appeared as one of the top 1000 names for children in the past ten years, so you'd be avoiding that whole confusing thing where everyone in the class is named Bella, or Katie or whatever. I'm pretty sure we'd have the only grandma in first grade. I'd like to see strong internet push to aid me in helping to convince S that this is the right name choice for us. It's a toss up between that and Su7san, where the seven is silent.(Special credit to Lindsay Manzo).

On Intelligence and the runaway bunny

S: Our little girl is inhering a big national deficit and climate change. (Pause). I hope she's smart.

Some other random quotes at the Jonathan Franzen reading of Freedom, a book that has engendered a lot of book love and debate amongst friends. (And my general take on this particular book, which I've read, is that it's a good, not a great book. But it's interesting to watch half of the literary establishment embrace it whole heartedly along with the public en masse, while the other half recoils, not entirely without merit, in what appear to be paroxysms of jealousy that someone is finally reading fiction and it is not theirs.

Audience member: What do you think about the topic of David Foster Wallace's soon to be posthumously published book? I mean, can you write a good book about boredom?

Franzen: (Pauses) I think that I could probably explain Dave's suicide in about twenty different ways. I think that one of those explanations is that he died of boredom. (At this point it is clear that Franzen is holding back tears and it became even more awkward to be sitting in an audience, with all that entails, asking a person, not a writer, about the death of a good friend. And once more I am struck by the oddity of human existence, particularly its twenty first century mode).

Other quotes, one of which made me exceedingly happy

H: I think being in book club has made me a bit of a snob about what I read :)

If I can turn one person a year into a book snob I'll feel pretty damn good about my book club. All are welcome. We are elitist; and we are proud of it!

Other quotes:

L: I just don't know whether I should tell you whether I read your blog or not?

M: Definitely. It shouldn't just be me spouting off into the ether. I think that all good literature is about conversation.

L: Wait a minute. Did you just say your blog is literature?

M: I think anything that engenders a good discussion is literature. I'm just pointing out that my blog is probably more edifying than a twitter post about a really great grilled cheese sandwich.

L: But by that rubric, wouldn't me commenting on your grilled cheese sandwich and saying, "that sounds good!" actually be turning that tweet into literature?

(At which point a longer conversation starts to take place, whose main point, I hope, is that it's really hard to be in a democracy because we have to decide both individually and collectively what is good and what is utter tripe. On a less macro scale, I think I trotted out the NBA and the Pen/Faulkner as examples of a literary society creating deciderer's because we can't read every damn book ourselves. And yes, on a macro level we have to decide whether grilled cheese sandwiches or universal health care, mind you we pay when people go the hospitals anyway, are more worth while to think about. Incidentally, I really do enjoy a good grilled cheese sandwich).

((Relatedly, through a bit of obvious slippage I did compare this blog to literature, which if I wasn't so lazy, I'd link to various other posts where I've complained, in a very meta type of way, that blogs, in general, and specifically mine, are not literary, and make me feel sort of guilty for having spent time on them when I could have been working on the next American masterpiece like Freedom or that collection of short stories I've been working on called "Sad People Staring out Windows at the rain."

I've included a picture of a pink elephant to make things all better.