Lacrew: the sport of future senators

After giving myself yet another tremendous haircut.

S: That's too short. Your hair was just starting to look good.

M: I don't want to spoil you.

Interpolation about sticks and the sun. A common refrain in our relationship.

M: It’s too bright today. If I had a stick long enough I’d poke out the sun

S: We’d all die in about eight minutes

M: It seems like a small price to pay for not having to put up with that dam- sun for eight minutes.

S: Yeah. Good point.

We recently paid an exorbitant amount of money to have a fence installed in our backyard. We had the fence installed because I am not handy and because s needs a place to play where the neighbor's dog doesn't bark at her. Sadly, in the recent windstorms our exorbitant fence came a bit loose and is now bowed over. I assumed that people put fence posts in concrete, but it appears that my fencing company thought dirt would be enough. Ah, nothing like money well spent. Luckily I sent an e-mail to the company and they agreed to come out and fix it with this lovely response.

I'LL PUT IT ON THE SERVICE LIST...IT WILL BE WITHIN A WEEK...NOT UNCOMMON GIVEN THE RECENT STORMS/60MPH WINDS IN LOOSE MUDDY GROUND...I'LL HAVE A TECH CHECK IT AND SECURE THE POSTS...

I was really enthused about this message because internet shouting is awesome. Nothing like the old caps lock key mashed down to make me feel like things are going to get done. I'm also a big fan of the ellipsis here, and am probably going to turn this into some sort of plagiarized poem.

In other news we're having the fridge guy out to fix the same problem he fixed nine months ago. And I'm listening to the squirrels serving each other tea in our attic and reflecting on the six hundred we spent last year to get rid of them. The only satisfaction that's better than a job well done is a job done crappily and quickly.

I've got a couple of ideas that I'm going to share with the internet. Hey internet! But I don't want anyone to steal them. After watching the Social Network and realizing how awesome pretentious colleges are, I decided that I needed to come up with some sort of way to be cool and east coasty. You see, we lack that sort of pretension about colleges where I'm from. Anyhow, I'm going to start a lacrew team. It combines the douchiness of Lacrosse players, yay Duke, with the high falutin obnoxiousness of English men rowing. I really think the sport is going to catch on.

What's better than being on the Lacrosse or crew team? Being on both, at the same time. Lacrew. The only thing I haven't figured out is how exactly lacrew is going to be a sport, but I consider it a minor detail. The initial thrust is all about branding, and I don't think it gets much better than lacrew.

Parenting 101: Crying it out

You know what sucks? Letting a child cry it out. Why? Because it hurts your heart and your ears to listen to them crying. I think I need to invest in a pair of those noise canceling head phones if we're going to do it. I don't know why people don't tell you that noise canceling headphones are an absolute must have when you've got a child. Probably because it makes you sound like a negligent parent. However, add this to my list of things you need when having a child.

1) Car seat, duh.

2) Bassinet. A plastic tub will do.

3) A lacrew stick. Every man woman and child from some snobby place on the east coast is going to be playing lacrew. Don't let your kid get left behind.

4) Noise canceling headphones. Don't be caught listening to your child cry without them. Why? You might actually hear the crying.

5) Patience. This will come in handy. I wonder how much patience is going for on the black market because I'd purchase some.

Tomorrow is just a day away

I'm thinking that in the future I'll probably write a book.

Why put off tomorrow what you can put off today?

Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life. The next day is too.

I don't know what the future holds, but it's probably really good.

In the future I'll probably have the sort of job that fulfills me at least ninety six percent of the time on a good week and ninety four on a bad week.

At some point we'll probably pick up a stray cat. I'll blame Sadie in advance.

I'd like it if someone could remind me at least once a day that today is the first day of the rest of my life.

I'm planning on a vacation in the future.

If I had to pick the color of the bench that I'd like to sleep on, unquestionably it would be green.

In the future I'll develop patience.

Didn't Hume mention something about the sun not rising? Is this useful?

Lists are aggravating when made by other people but very reassuring when I make them. This property is not unique to lists.

It's hard to not to fall victim to the transitive property when watching sports.

Still, I'm guessing that the sun will rise tomorrow. Hume aside.

We watch movies in thirty minute segments.

The strange thing is, now whenever I hear a baby cry I am able to identify it in an entirely new way. I don't mean that old story about recognizing your baby's cry. Rather, I mean to say that I recognize that a child is crying and that it means something. Okay, what I mean is, and this is most of life, trying to explain what one means or intends to mean, that I understand the cry in a universal sort of way that was previously unavailable.

Time is money --Ben Franklin

Between job and baby and twenty minutes here and there, I don't have any time. Are the two that strongly correlated? I hope not.

Ben Franklin=100 U.S. dollars. How does his face peering out from the bill change our perception of the quote? Does it?

Though standards of attractiveness have varied throughout time it's fair to say that Ben Franklin is transcendently attractive. How did we get here? Was the transitive property involved? Constantly misapplied.

According to a sleep book that S is reading babies do best when they are put down at 6:30 P.M.

According to me people who are reading books about anything baby related become briefly insufferable and unapproachable on the subject while simultaneously sort of earning that insufferableness by actually having read a book about the given subject. This probably has something to do with lists and perhaps the transitive property.

Speaking of the future...We know that time travel does not exist because not too many people were at the Crucifixion. Does this make sense? If not, why? Is it possible/probable that the entirety of human history would be altered in the moment that time travel is achieved?

In the future we should probably colonize Mars.

One of my favorite lines on the Simpsons is Homer saying, "When will people get it. Democracy doesn't work." If only he had added, "without a specific almost entire lack of socio-cultural specific heritage and a sort of clean slate and only after one half of the new nation tried to split off." Though, in retrospect, the original line is probably funnier.

Does being lazy have any merit?

In the future I'm going to be productive.

Is it odd that Ben Franklin didn't even know that Mars existed or is this just the sort of exigency that we accept as a necessary condition of existence. Ie, not pondering the intense weirdness of our specific place in time?

Tomorrow is going to be a big day as long as the sun rises.

A playlist for Sadie

Taking the bottle after a brief struggle.



Smiling at daddy as he sings to her.



Sitting sweetly in daddy's lap while he rests his head on her soft fuzzy head.


"The first time that I met you I knew I would know you even better."

Finally beginning to nod off.

Question Six/Video

Is exile always a misfortune?

Depends on your perspective. For many writers, particularly in the early portion of the twentieth century, exile resulted in the writers doing their best work to date. Of course, exile here is being used more in the ex-patriot form. Those artists found, not surprisingly, that America was best viewed from across the Atlantic. They found that distance brought them a new clarity unavailable in the grand old United States. Any writer worth their salt would pretty much confirm the virtue of exile from one's work in order to view it afresh. Ie, I'm using exile in a different way again, in which a writer waits a few months or a year before approaching a piece of writing again, so that they are able to see it as an outsider would and thus become able to see the faults that might not be available from inside the thing.

Exile for many people often arises out of necessity. Obviously we have a very salient example right now happening in Libya. This sort of exile could be classified as beneficial only in so far as these people are getting to a safer place. However, exile as unifying idea certainly can serve a good purpose. Ie, the absence of a place can serve as a common unifying thing between people in a way that it couldn't otherwise.

In general though exile is a misfortune. Being tossed out of a place that a person believes to be home is certainly not something that a person would wish, good results withstanding. I'm not sure that the perspective gained by exile is at all worth the pain a person would feel at the loss of home. Certainly Einstein's exit from Nazi Germany was both boom and bust on a variety of levels. However, on a macro scale I'd call his exile a positive one for the capital W world. The point is, exile needs to be defined before we start quibbling about whether it is always a misfortune.

Videos of the baby.

Most of these end in crying.

Sadie enjoying some quality literature.

Sadie showing appropriate respect for bears.

Question Five/Post 400

Question Five: Why should I tolerate?

Theory 1: You shouldn't. I don't tolerate it when somebody cuts me off in traffic, and I tolerate it when someone cheats at cards. Well, I tolerate me cheating at cards. And I suppose honking could loosely be interpreted as a form of not tolerating, however, getting out of the car and hitting them with my shoe would probably be even lower on the toleration spectrum.

To allow (something that one dislikes or disagrees with) to exist or occur without interference

toleration - a disposition to tolerate or accept people or situations; "all people should practice toleration and live together in peace"

toleration - official recognition of the right of individuals to hold dissenting opinions (especially in religion)

I'm certain that a number of different definitions of toleration exist, but we'll just have to leave it at that. It's probably safe to assume that the question is referring to tolerate in the sense that it is defined in the third definition. Ie, respecting someone who holds a dissenting opinion.

Awkwardness ensues.

Religious toleration, a bedrock, depending on who you talk to, of our society is a good idea. However, it's perfectly reasonable to ask a question like, why should I tolerate? in the case of religion. The majority of religions believe in some type of afterlife whilst simultaneously believing that they are the one true way. Thus, if I tolerate your religious difference or apathy what I'm actually tolerating is your soul's eternal damnation. Religiously, barring some sort of Calvinist elect, I don't see much hope for toleration at least from a rigorous intellectual perspective. However, I actually think that our little spinning ball of blue is headed that way very slowly.

To what degree am I required to tolerate someone with an opposing viewpoint? If I believe that the interests of the many are best served by a large government that provides jobs, and you believe that the interests of the many are served by a small government it becomes very hard to tolerate each other's opinion. The hawkish right wing radio guys pretty much set the bar on this one. Ie, they don't tolerate the difference of opinion from "liberals." Rather, they insist that a difference of opinion is not a slight thing but rather the sort of thing that will lead to the downfall of our great nation, which was, of course, built on ideas of toleration and such.

I think we've come to a decision as a society that there are some things that we will not tolerate. It is not okay to steal your neighbor's car or your neighbor's wife. It is not okay to kill someone. These are things that will not be tolerated. We will put you in prison. However, I would argue that we tolerate speeding. Most motorists disagree with the limit portion of the speed limit sign and go on at their own pace.

The short answer for toleration applies to the golden rule. If I am unable to tolerate any difference of opinion in my life I'm probably going to live a very empty life. Ie, when carried to its extreme, it would life to an autocratic ruling of the masses, which would probably short circuit some of the pleasures of a good disagreement, or even a nuanced agreement. For example, I enjoy talking about a good book with friends, and I might even be willing to tolerate their difference of opinion about chapter two, if only to discover some new part of the book that I have completely missed. Without the initial toleration, it's easy to become intellectually stagnant.

Historical evidence.

Lack of toleration has lead to some of the greatest massacres and missteps in history. You should tolerate because we have ample historical evidence that lack of tolerance is a great way to shi the bed.

Alternative answer.

The idea of toleration is a twenty first century concept developed by weak-willed westerners who aren't willing to stamp their name to anything. We have a nasty tendency of only tolerating things that are in our self-interest as has been witnessed most palpably in the middle east. The same self-interest that has always been part and parcel with being human is still in play, but now we're dressing it up in different clothes. It is important that we keep in the forefront of our mind a lack of tolerance. An unwillingness to accept the status quo. A sharp and agile mind that will constantly question those who hold different viewpoints while simultaneously remaining open to change ourselves. It's a tough trick to pull and perhaps the only way is through a lack of tolerance.

Alternative Answer.

Buddhism. Unitarians.

Alternative Answer.

Only on good days.

Question Four: Astrology/bottle strike

Credit to Mary Koles for sending this to me. Each year the U.S. News and World Report ranks colleges and universities. Everybody is always really excited about this process. One of the people most excited by the rankings this year decided to come up with his own list, copied here.

In light of the "Best University" discussion, I've come up with my own "Best Mammal" ranking.
#1 - Lion. For obvious reasons. Come on, it's the African king.
#2 - Puppy dog. Its endearing snuggles and licks will make even Scrooge's heart melt.
#3 - Whales. Because they are the biggest.
#4 - Dolphins. A close competition to the whales. Although some might argue that its cuteness tops the size of the whales.
#5 - Hyenas. For their awesome team work and predatory skills.
#6 - Bats. They are kind of like the URM status. They have a visual disability yet they thrive in numbers.
#7 - Squirrels. They are deceptively cunning in the way they pretend like they aren't rats.
#8 - Giraffes. Because they reach high like no other mammals can.
#9 Cheetahs. Fastest mammal on earth. Problem is that it's only fast.
#10 Humans. Because they make stupid rankings like this.

s kind of sort of stopped her bottle strike, taking the bottle on a few occasions over the past few days. However, it still takes the bottle holding party at least an hour of coaxing or so to get her to actually start taking the damn thing. It's not exactly the most efficient method. But, beggars can't be choosers. The exception obviously being if you were to offer a beggar a choice of tickets to a game or a sundae or something, in which case, beggars would be choosers.

The funniest thing about having little s around is the wild vacillations in her temperament that leave you constantly confounded or amused. I mean, the kid can be screaming for ten minutes straight in her car seat, which, get used to it lil s, you've been in a car seat before, is it really worth screaming every time, when will you figure out that it won't change anything to scream? Then you pull her out and she sits docilely for ten minutes watching people eat dinner like she's some kind of lil fawn. This is probably the best and worst thing about having a kid. You can't count on them from moment to moment. I can't say I've ever had a relationship that was so sporadic. If she was my gf or bff I'd have already kicked her to the curb. But she's my baby girl, so I'll probably just keep on loving her.



All Souls Examination for Oxford graduates in an attempt to gain a seven year fellowship:

Is there anything to be said for astrology?

Obviously the question seems to almost imply an answer of, not much. If you have to frame the question in such a light you're clearly not particularly interested in the answers now are you? Which is interesting because the most interesting thing about astrology is what it has to say about human beings writ large. Note: I put no stock in the predictive qualities that some people would associate with the pseudoscience of astrology. I find the idea of signs that influence my personality to be downright insulting.

However, somewhere around the time that man invented language, or God invented it for him, we (he/she) began to get interested in what our lives might look like in the future. By itself it's probably one of the most interesting/useful things about humanity. We have a natural tendency to worry about our future. This lead us to develop in ways that left other creatures in the dust or savanna or whatever. Unfortunately, this same restless quality that caused people to look up at the stars for answers continues to plague us, such that we, (particularly westerners) are not too good about living in the present moment. Instead, we are constantly looking to the heavens for a sign that things will be changing soon.

Astrology shows us that our head in the clouds (ha, ha) nature is not unique. Rather it appears to be something intrinsic and unique to humans. Astrology is any number of things but it may well be proof that human beings are a special creation. What other species would give a crap what ten years down the road might look like. This species daring to dreamness has literally lead us up into the stars themselves. (if you believe that the moon landing wasn't staged. Note: I don't) What early astrologer, roughly five thousand years ago could have predicted that?

Question Three

The subject is currently upstairs screaming at the top of her lungs. The subject appears to wildly vacillate between peaceful sleep and ear piercing screams. I've begun to wonder if the subject is experiencing intense nightmares that are waking her up. That would explain the inability of the subject to calm down when arising from sleep. The subject has also taken to waking up several times during the night to howl. We are not sure if she is attempting to turn into a werewolf or whether the screaming is because of the nightmares or some other unknown phenomenon.

The subject has lately begun smiling quite intently at sights that most people would regard as troublesome. Last night I held the subject at close range while S cried in the bathroom. Upon seeing S crying the subject broke into a large grin. The subject has been known to grin as well when either of the researchers is accidentally smacked in the face with one of her hands and recoils. We are not sure whether the subject doesn't understand social mores or whether she's a sociopath. Results are pending.

Question 3 from the All Souls challenge (As always, other responses are highly encouraged though not often received).

Are there too many accountants and auditors?

I'm entirely ill-equipped to answer this question. I'm also not sure how the answer to this question should relate to whether a person gets a fellowship for seven years or not. I mean, the question is legit, but this seems a bit farcical. And, as we all know, humor has no business lying in bed with intelligence.

Tangentially related fact:

Date on which student loans first passed credit cards among the largest sources of private debt in the United States: 6/30/10

I'm going to attack the question from the back end and say that it's related to our current financial system. Aside: I heard this fascinating story about a tribe that used giant limestone boulders as currency. And the boulders would remain in the same place for years but have belonged to several people during that time period. The most interesting of which was a large piece of limestone that some guys claimed to have found but lost at sea. These guys were credited with actually having the limestone. Ie, money in stocks.

I think the number of accountants and auditors is related to the extreme value that we place in developed nations on having money. It is necessary for our financial system to have a hell of a lot people running constant checks on it. Thus, the critique should really be attacking a society that is based almost entirely on material wealth while displaying scant attention to the paucity of emotional/familial/communal wealth. Ie, we have too many accountants because we care too much about money. However, that puts people in a bind as being the first person to not care about money doesn't exactly set you up to succeed. It also makes you a dirty hippie. Truthfully just reading the explanatory web page on accountants makes me incredibly sleepy. Go ahead, give it a tryWhat I'm getting at is that I'm less concerned about the number of accountants and more concerned about the love of money, which seems to be intimately tied to the accountants.


The simpler answer could be yes. People need to figure out how to do their own taxes/retirement funds.

Subjects

The subject appeared irritated at the presentation of a bottle containing her primary needs of sustenance on three different occasions during the course of the day. The subject appeared to chew on the portion of the bottle that is ideally supposed to simulate her food obtaining system. However, the subject did not at any point in time utilize the tool effectively to gain food. We are not left to wonder if the subject is deficient or whether we, the researchers, who immediately provide said sustenance in a familiar format, are at fault.

The subject routinely sleeps in increments of six to nine hours. We've been told that other similarly aged subjects have varying sleep schedules ranging from four to twelve hours. The subject appears to be truncating sleep schedules over the past few days. We are unsure if it is related to the abstention from bottle feeding or a change in the sleeping conditions. The subject now sleeps in a previously unoccupied room while the researchers sleep in a room down the hallway. We've noted that the subject often moves around more frequently in her new abode.

The subject has recently shown an increasing interest in hair, fingers, and noises created by the researchers that simulate bird calls, machine guns, or blasters from Star Wars. We suspect that the subject is either confused by the noises or wondering why we didn't teach a variety of clicking dialects instead of our paltry language.

We as researchers are approaching our wit's end.

Question 2 from the All Souls exam given to Oxford students. Answers from other readers strongly encouraged.

Q: From where does a sense of community come?

Digging people out after snowstorms? Shared political values? Religious values? (particularly in a more conservative context) The suburbs? Low crime rates? Similar socioeconomic statuses? Shared value systems that could be applied in a religious or secular context? Playing in sports leagues together? Picking up trash? People with too much time on there hands?

Query? How big can a community be, in which one can feel a sense of community? Ie, is it possible to feel a sense of community in New York, in D.C.? What is the maximum allowable population in which people feel a sense of community? Nebulous term aside. Is it at all negated in modern society by the seemingly meaningful connections we've formed with our televisions and computers? Can a person function fruitfully and feel a strong sense of community in a strictly online sense? Do we have to redefine community in order to reflect our modern situation? Can a sense of community have a negative connotation? Ie, did members of the SS feel a sense of community or is the term here being purely restricted to a positive sense of community?

I'd argue that a sense of community is generally felt when a person either highly values a particular place or a small group of people that occupy that place. Ie, I will not feel a sense of community about a place that I do not value. Thus, landlords often look for people to own homes rather than rent them because the owners are more apt to feel that the house belongs to them and treat it as such. Note: Most houses belong to the bank that loaned you the money for them.

I'd also argue that contrary to what people generally associate as dividers, age, race etc. That the thing that makes people feel the greatest shared sense of community is socioeconomic status. This, exceptions obviously on the two extremes of the spectrum, similarity in income is often related to things like where you shop and where you eat etc. Thus, a shared socioeconomic status will often create secondary commonalities that people associate with communities.

Community, like many other things in life, is also necessarily fostered by action, which is to say, behaving as though one has a strong sense of community often results in a strong sense of community actually developing. The point is simple, yet true, and perhaps more relevant in our contemporary world. If I pick up trash in my neighborhood, or help a woman dig her car out of the snow I began to believe that I have a stronger sense of community merely by acting in a way that fosters that sense.

Block parties and moderate boozing would probably also foster community.

Structure.....All Souls College Examination

Skyscrapers took a long time to begin their rise towards the heavens because, before the invention of the steel frame, the entire weight of the building had to be held at the base. It is therefore reasonable for a modern reader to wonder how wide and how tall the Tower of Babel actually was. Steven Millhauser wrote a short story in which the inhabitants of an ancient city build a tower that pierces through the bottom of heaven. It's best if I don't structure things that way.

A year ago, at this time, I was counting down the days until I turned thirty.

26.

The Atlantic has a very interesting article about AI in this month's issue. From my understanding of the Turing test, computers struggle to make small talk. This is something that they have in common with young men at bars.

And, in what cannot be deemed a coincidence, Jeopardy is currently airing episodes that are pitting an IBM computer against past human champions. It is fair to say that the fate of all humanity rests upon this competition.


No pleasure can be quite as sweet as watching Alex Trebek chastise a computer.

None of this is really about AI. The First Computer weighed 30 short tons (27 t), was roughly 8 feet (2.4 m) by 3 feet (0.9 m) by 100 feet (30 m), took up 1800 square feet (167 m²), and consumed 150 kW of power, which is probably not big enough for God to be interested in smiting.

It would probably be best if we got some sort of smiting ration somewhere in Leviticus.

Questions from the All Souls exam given each year to graduates of Oxford. Only 3 fellowships are awarded to students who take the exam and roughly 100 or so people take it per year. I had an idea, not on the scale of the Empire State building or even the first computer. It's a modest proposal. I'd be interested to hear some of my friends responses to the questions. However, I am fairly certain, and it's kind of one of the questions that are time spent doing deep critical thinking has been reduced by the advent of the internet. The internet is not measurable, but if I was God, I would probably consider smiting it. In Egypt, before the fall of Mubarak, the internet was briefly blacked out, which just goes to show that humans aren't as good at smiting.

Q: What is war good for?

A: Provided by....Augustine. Just war? The greatest generation. Stopping pogroms/death camps. Reducing overpopulation. Bringing democratic freedom to the rest of the world. Expelling Canannites from the land of milk and honey. Creating a sense of national identity. Getting young people killed. The economy? Eisenhower and the military industrial complex.

Fact: Estimated percentage change in the US defense budget, NOT including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan= +80percent.

War as fundamental to human existence. One could argue, as I'm nearly certain Augustine does, having found it impossible to ever read anything of his, just war does exist. Although, in a post-modern context, that's probably always debatable.

Without war we wouldn't know how great peace is. Note: Peace would probably be just fine without war.

Philosophy.

Defense contracting companies.

In general, governments.

War is, in my opinion, only really good in hindsight. Therefore, I propose that all future wars be fought in the past, after historians and thinkers have had time to sort out the implications of the war. Therefore; the UN will enter Rwanda post haste rather than waiting for a genocide to take place. However, the Italians will not invade Ethiopia in 1935 because in hindsight it sort of causes WW2 and was also terrible.

The only problem with my plan is that it involves the construction of a time machine, or at the very least, a large band of extras, preferably from the movie 300, who will go back in time and pretend to fight the wars that we should have fought or come to amicable terms on those we shouldn't have. The arbitration for such a large firm of actors would lead to, no doubt, a stalemate in contract negotiations, which would tie up the legal and intellectually resources of the greatest nations long enough for the world to be at peace.

So, take the Oxford challenge: What is war good for?

The week that was

On Mondays we tended to complain about the weekend. We'd either done too much and not really had a chance to relax or done too little and there we were sitting behind our cubical walls again without a damn thing to show for our two paltry days off. On Mondays the printer always said Happy Monday, but we could never figure out what there was to be happy about. At times we'd have a good conversation with someone we almost knew, and for a few moments we'd imagine that this week was the week when things were going to change. And then we'd get an e-mail or a phone call about something that had gone wrong, that we'd screwed up, and we'd realize that it was just Monday again.

On Tuesdays we'd start checking the clock at 1:15. Only three and a half hours to go we'd say to each other intending for it to be a joke and not some depressing reality. We tended to forget to drink coffee on Tuesdays, and we'd sit in our cubes with a headache watching videos of things that we heard were funny.

On Wednesdays we went to meetings in the morning with a bunch of people we sort of knew but not well enough to make jokes during the particularly boring portions of the meeting that really merited it. It was on those days, the sun just some ghost hidden behind dark clouds that we thought about applying for other jobs. We tossed words like passionate around to people we sort of knew about things we weren't doing until the day was over.

On Thursday we started talking about the weekend weather. We speculated on wind chill and its relative effect on the quality of our plans. We spent at least an hour walking around the office looking for people to talk to but only spent ten minutes with people we knew. The other fifty minutes were spent imagining the things we'd say in a life that wasn't our own.

On Fridays we pretended to work while we dreamed about weekends to come. We walked quickly to appear busy. We asked our co-workers about all those little things that we'd forgotten to during the week. We bore them no ill-will. It's Friday dammit! we seemed to say. In the afternoon we had a meeting which we spent doodling pictures of roses in our notebooks. And eventually the day ended, the sunlight fading to that uniform blue of late afternoon, and we trudged home almost certain that nothing was ever going to change, but that it would be okay for just one more week.

Some

s continues on her bottle strike or, mom's weak will not forcing the baby to starve until she breaks down and finally takes the damn bottle. I remember, at least a month ago, when s used to be the type of lil girl who would chug down a bottle in six minutes flat and then give herself indigestion for an hour. I miss that little girl. That same little girl who would curl up on her father's chest and sleep away the evening instead of constantly trying to lift her head up to look at pretty lights or a fan like she does now, and, in the process, winds up getting really irritated about not being able to see anything besides her father's chin. Lousy baby.

Now for some gratuitous baby videos! This first video pretty much sums up about 9/10 times that we actually use the video camera. As it turns out babies aren't like trained bears who ride around the circus on tricycles. I mean, you show those bears how to do it once, and they won't let you down. However, with a baby, you're pretty much going to be let down at least 95 percent of the time. Whatever the child has just done that is incredibly cute will never be repeated when you put the camera on them. Why? Because people's behavior always changes when they know they are being observed. And nothing says, "do something amazingly cute" like a camera. Actually our camera can't talk, but it's fair to say that it probably should, and I'm patenting that idea right now. Imagine a camera that says "cheese" and "smile" and "Dad, it's only one damn picture can you at least put on a sweater." Gold.



So, yeah. That's my little s. She's humorless. I see a long career ahead of her in HR. If anyone reading this blog is in HR, I don't mean you. You are probably the exception that proves the rule. I just imagine it might be tough to be funny in a job where you always have to be worried about saying the wrong thing. Because, as we all learned from watching that amazing video of the count, saying crazy stuff is funny.

But wait, I hear you beginning to ask yourself why it's been so many words since you saw a video of a cute baby. Here is a video of s's one month birthday. That's right, one month birthday. It's the sort of obnoxious things that new parents do because they can't understand why everyone isn't as amazed by the milestones as they are.


Parent: She found her toes today.
Singe Friend:...............Good?

The Ergonomics of cow milking in Sweden/Bottle Strike

Sadly this post it not about the ergonomics of cow milking in Sweden. However, I did receive an article request for said material, and I'm delighted that we have a crack staff of people out in the world looking at things like the ergonomics of cow milking in Sweden.

Other ideas:

1. The incidence of monarch butterfly on monarch butterfly crime in dense forests.

2. The ability of children between the ages of 3 and 3.2 to correctly identify antidisestablishmentarianism as the longest word in countries that were formerly part of the Soviet Union.

3. Twitter.

4. A measure of the inscrutability of New Yorker cartoons for people who live outside of NYC.

5. The effect of mercury on the sexual preference of white ibises. I jest, obviously that's already been done.

I've got lots of other ideas too, but I don't want to put them all out there until after I've published several of them myself.

So, we've been sort of lax in feeding s bottles, and last night she decided that she no longer cared for them. As the spouse currently not on maternity leave do you:

a) Accuse your spouse of lax parenting insisting that they should have known that the child needed to take a bottle more regularly whilst absolving yourself by saying, "One of use has to work." Note: don't mention salaries in this scenario.

b) Admit that both of you bear some culpability in failing to administer a bottle to the child. In this case do not say things like, "I don't know why we couldn't have given her a bottle last weekend." Mention that parenting is a tough job and that you're both still learning.

c) Blame the baby. Insist that it is her ill-temper that is causing the problem. Spend at least ten minutes shoving a bottle into her mouth while she screams back at you in the sort of voice that means "screw you dad!"

d) Blame the bottle. Sit down with the bottle and talk to it. Explain the virtue that is achieved when an object is used as it's supposed to be. Pat the bottle on the back and tell it to give the baby one more chance.

e) a-c, with an emphasis on b.

In conclusion, s is apparently on what the books call a bottle strike or what I call "an opportunity to show your baby that your will is stronger because she's not always going to know what's best for her in this world of ours, and we, as parents, need to show her the way that things ought to be done and if that means that she screams and starves for an hour until she takes the bottle then so be it."

In retrospect I can see why they went with bottle strike. It's a little pithier. I'm already looking forward to the battle that s and I will be engaged in upon my arrival home. I don't think she stands a chance. She's not even two feet tall. This is a classic David vs. Goliath matchup.

David: Excessive screaming

Goliath: Irritation at being thwarted.

David: Pretty damn cute when she smiles.

Goliath: Not entirely immune to said smiles.

David: Almost bald.

Goliath: Has an advantage in the hair department.

David: Inability to shove the bottle away with her hands.

Goliath: Ability to manipulate objects using his hands.

David: Ability to not swallow milk.

Goliath: Ability to keep pouring milk into David's mouth until she starts choking on what is either milk or her own little screams at which point he wimps out and starts comforting her until she stops crying at which point he rejoins the fray.

David: Getting cuter.

Goliath: Getting older.

It should be fun!

Uhhmmmm

This is the funniest thing I've seen in a while. Apparently eight million people have beaten me to this video, but I was still cracking up, and so I'm just going to go ahead and post it. Note: I never watched Sesame Street as a kid because I was the youngest of three. Thus, I considered Ses. to be the sort of show that babies watched. I was all about He-man and G.I. Joe, and Transformers, and Voltron. Ergo; I have no strong affinity for the show that is scarred by making a few jokes at its expense.



Listen, I read a post below this video that was criticizing this video for demeaning an education show. However, that person was tragically born without a sense of humor.

In other family related to news I got a chance to take (pause to laugh at how funny the count) care of Sadie this weekend for the first time in a long time. And I concluded that we probably need to get a nanny or something because taking care of kids is hard work. S was nattering on about how she wanted to attend some sort of breastfeeding binge at a museum this week because a lady was told she couldn't in the museum. And this is the part of the conversation where I just start saying, (about the security guard who told the woman she couldn't breastfeed) "Oh no he didn't girl!" And I'd like that same phrase appended or something like it to any reaction to me claiming taking care of babies is hard. Yes, I realize that most people know that, but I didn't see any of you in my hotel room when s was crying for hours because she's a baby. Rant over.


I'm waiting for s to take her next jump in development. Lately she's been trying to sit up, and she's starting to try and attempt to laugh. She will smile at you pretty often now, but it appears to be entirely out of context as she will still often finish a smile by breaking into tears. I'm trying to work with her on dancing and laughing and that sort of thing because I'm scared she's going to turn out all serious and stuff, which would be, I think we can all agree, a tragedy.

s also enjoyed the Super Bowl with me last night until my team lost in the last couple of minutes and then she seemed a little confused about why daddy was shouting at the top of his lungs and waking her up from sleep. I think I was just building character. Besides which, if the little girl heard any untoward language she probably already heard it from the count first.