Blessed Miscreancy, That Abides No Demarcation

Where am I, you ask? That this call to action should awake me from my slumber and renew the vital juices of my pallid, hunkering muse; this is your wish, is it?

I picture this deviceful anthropomorphism as a sort of shriveled salamander, crouching blind by some bio-luminescent underground lake, awaiting only the siren call of Yog-Sothoth to manifest a magnificent rebirth. No sound penetrates the Stygian darkness. No light falls on these unseeing eyes. It is the long, dark twilight of the soul.

Alright Boxer, you win. I'll blog something, I guess.

But hey, enough about me! How have you been? Google Analytics still periodically deposits a tangy and pungent digital turd in my inbox, so I know someone's reading this stuff. And to you I say: thanks for not giving up.

Here's a run-down of some random stuff that's been going on:

• Brother's completed his transformation and emerged from his Chrysalis a full-fledged American (or landed immigrant, or migrant worker, or something. I can't really get my head around the legal details). The whole family recently trucked off to Jersey for the foreseeable future, which is kind of sad. Son has been clamoring for his cousins ever since.


• Speaking of Son, he's turned Six! It puts me in mind of not-too-long-ago, when Six Years Old was the sort of unofficial demarcation between baby and childhood. Put away childish things, boy. You are of two worlds, now. Not man, not child, but some curious alloy, and subject to all the many challenges, and not very many of the rewards, of both your constituent metals. Here are some pictures of Brother and I, at a similarly tender age.


• That ridiculous Gold Buying thing is over and done with, but I'm not really allowed to talk about it.


• ThinFast has announced her departure from PerpetualStartup for the sunny shores of (ugh) Toronto. Her reasons are her own, but we are all very sad to see her go.


• Many other interesting things happened, but their respective statutes of limitations have expired, so I will light on them but briefly: IronMan and Goldylocks had a beautiful baby boy. The family and I visited The Boxer's farm and milked the chickens (turns out Son has a little crush on BigKid. His eyes still light up whenever I mention her!). Winter finally ended, and the rainy season began, with no end in sight. We've pulled Son out of his English/French/Greek school in favor of one that won't cause him heart palpitations every time we mention it.

...Meh, and that's about it for now. But wait! Big things coming.

Big, HUGE things!

We Are Confronted With Insurmountable Opportunities

ThinFast is headed to Vegas this week, for reasons entirely unconnected with CTIA. And next week, IronMan tags along with Pow for reasons that are CTIA-related.

I don't know why you would even care, or what would impel me to write about that, but there it is.

Son has, of late - but wherefore I know not - lost all mirth, foregone all custom of exercise. He's never been an enthusiastic scholar, but something (we think) happened last Wednesday at school to make him truly dread the engine of his education. Thursday morning, in the car on the way to school, he complained of a stomachache. When that didn't work, he basically freaked right the fuck out, so Wife, motherly pity in her heart, brought him back home.

And again on Friday.

Nearest we can glean from his sobbing attempts to explain through periodic panic attacks, the teacher yelled at him, or gave him a time-out, or some such, and he doesn't know why (because it was all in Greek). So now he thinks she hates him.

As I may have previously mentioned, Son is a sensitive soul, prone to emotion and histrionics. He gets this from his mother, of course (oooohhh, no you di in't!).

The sewn seeds of long and patient discussion and emotional exploration have born the fruit of increased confidence (to gratuitously torture a metaphor), and yesterday I finally managed to convince him that it was okay to go back to school, that his teachers don't hate him, and that as long as he tries his hardest, we're very proud of him, etcetera.

I rode in the back of the car with him all the way to school, talked him through the inevitable nervous stomachache, and watched my brave little boy confront his fear and enter the yawning maw of the dread portal of the kindergarten with head held high, walking as if a condemned man, to meet his executioner.

Later in the day, the school called us to say he was running a fever, so wife went and picked him up and brought him home.

Welcome! To the World of TOMORROW!

In the lead-up to xmas, I could see the fever of avarice burning like a cinder behind my spawn's eyes, alongside the twin spark of Christmas Magic. On the one hand, this was a season of joy and love, and decorations, and angels, and Baby Jesus, etc. On the other hand, PRESENTS! I WANT MORE PRESENTS! WILL WE HAVE MORE PRESENTS TOMORROW DADDY? It was this promise of Christmas Magic, brought to you by the good people at Toys "r" Us, that put me in mind of all the promises-of-a-brighter-tomorrow that we've been fed over the years. Or maybe it was too much listening to Obama.

Retro-futurism has always sort of fascinated me. Well, to the extent that I pretend to be fascinated by any one thing, for purposes of blogging. It's 2009. We're living in the fucking future right now. So why is everyone still waiting for their flying cars? Their personal robot maids? Their jet-powered roller blades?

What nostalgia-for-futures-lost powers this endless undercurrent of proto-optimism? I can remember that beautiful hover-car like it was yesterday. Or tomorrow. Or something. The sleek lines, all that gleaming chrome. The promise of a brighter, antimatter-powered future. It seemed to stand in for all the things that I hoped and dreamed of for myself, my family, and humankind in general (as much as I loathe humankind).

I didn't really want to blog about this, but then there was that other blog post, and I can't go and delete it, because it's, you know... out there now, and that would be editorially inconsistent or something. So here, by way of retroactive cancellation of my previous crowing, is the anti-announcement: That whole pregnancy thing... didn't really work out.

And that's all I really want to say about that.

The Time For Questions Is Over. Now Is The Time For Unbridled Optimism

Son (aged 4) lost his first tooth yesterday (I'm so proud)! So last night we sent the tooth fairy an email together, and wrote a little note and stuck it to his door.

And in the morning was a shiny new dollar, and a thank-you letter from the tooth fairy, extolling the virtues of flossing, and encouraging continued good will toward members of the professional order of dental hygienists.

But what stuck with me after that was how we (Son and I) had started the day talking about how he's a "Big Boy" now, and the tooth fairy was going to bring him a dollar for his tooth, to celebrate, and somehow this devolved into a discussion about How Can We Extort More Money From The Tooth Fairy? Son wanted a minimum of fifteen dollars, and a toy to be named later. I tried to explain to him that baby teeth were a commoditized good, that it was a buyer's market at the moment, and that enamel futures were rated "underperform". My protestations fell on deaf ears, as they always do, and we lay down for bed-time with visions of avarice dancing in his big blue eyes.

To distract him from his inevitable disappointment (The tooth fairy has bills to pay, after all), we spoke instead of What Does The Tooth Fairy Want With All These Teeth, Anyway? Son and I came up with the following:

- Use them to build a house (a gruesome image of a castle made from drawn teeth briefly assailed me, but I pressed on)
- She grinds them up and uses them to fertilize her garden (or the Amazon Rain Forest)
- She grinds them up to make snow.
- She puts them in a machine (the purpose of this diabolical engine is, as yet, unknown)
- She eats them. ("She eats teeth?" I asked. "Yes, they're good for your bones!" explained Son. This is logic I cannot refute).
- She makes affordable and unique costume jewelery, which she sells on a blanket at the park on Sundays.
- She plays dice with them.
- She is building a Doomsday device, powered by teeth.

Wife chimed in with:
- She plants them in new babies' mouths, to make new teeth. It's like recycling!

Here we face the thrilling diversity of human experience. It's obvious that Wife and I have a very different thought process (hers tends more toward the sunny, happy, "Whole Foods" approach, mine is a little more macabre). I wonder which path the boy will choose?

We are abjured, nay, forbidden to refer to him as "my baby", "my little boy", or any such term of endearment containing the words "little" or "small". Having lost his first tooth, he is now officially a "Big Boy", so of course he wants beer. To be clear, I rarely, if ever, have beer in the house. It's just a habit I never got into, so I'm not sure how he made up his mind that beer = grown-up, but there it is.

Other Cute Things The Boy Has Done Recently:

- The other day we were wrestling, and he wanted to eat a cookie. "You can eat a cookie if you can get out from under me," I said, pinning him for a three-count. He squirmed and kicked, and rather than fight me off with brute force, somehow squicked out the side and slipped out from under me all sneaky-like. "You're Sneaky!" I exclaimed. He giggled and struck a kung-fu pose: "Sneaky like a NINJA!".

- Wife came back from grocery chopping with a pair of sunglasses for the Boy, as well as two dollar-store water pistols. First he grabs the pistols and yells "FREEZE, Sucka!", then puts on the sunglasses, snaps his fingers and points at us: "looking good, ladies."

The Second Rule of Fight Club

I recently told the 14-year old daughter of a close friend: "There are only two emotions that men are allowed to admit to: Amusement and Anger. If a guy talks to you about feelings other than these, he's probably in love with you."

Of course I delivered this in a sort of semi conspiratorial "don't tell anyone I told you this deep dark secret" - kind of way. I'm sure she didn't believe a word of it, which is good, because I'm not sure if it's true or not. Either way, it's sad.

Why do men hate "the talk"? Why, when Wife says "Sweetie, I want to talk" (italics hers), do I role my eyes and suppress a pained groan? Surely we could all benefit from getting in touch with our feelings and having a good cathartic buchke over lattes and facials?

Ick.

One of the many reasons primitive man-monkeys like me don't tend to talk about our feelings could be that we're not a hundred percent convinced it's going to solve anything. For me, talking is all about communication. Specifically, communication of a problem. Step 1, communicate the problem. Step 2, identify and communicate the solution to the problem, or if there is no apparent solution, solicit additional information. Step 3, high fives all around, followed by beer. Note the conspicuous absence of any discussion of my mood.

This is not what women mean when they ask you to talk about your feelings. In fact, this is the opposite of what they mean.

As a "for instance", when I come home at night, one thing my survival instinct has taught me is to ask Wife "how was your day?". During the course of the ensuing epic monologue, many conflicts will be introduced, heroes and villains will rise and fall, and the emerging topical thread will contribute itself to Wife's Bildungsroman in subtle and meaningful ways.

Here is a list of things I must not say during this conversation:

• "Hey, I had that exact same thing happen to me once, let me tell you all about it."
• "I know exactly how to solve your problem. Here is the answer..."

Here is a list of things I probably should say instead:

• "Wow Honey, that's awful! No wonder you're so upset."
• "That bitch! I hope you told her to go to hell!"
• ...and any other topical expressions of sympathy in that key.

This shows Wife that not only am I tuned into the conversation and actually listening to what she's saying (the male communication), but I'm also tuned into her feelings about the whole thing (the female communication).

And voila, we've just talked about our feelings. More specifically, she's talked about her feelings, and I've listened. You would think that this is only about 50% of what women want out of a conversation, but actually it's closer to about 90% (not to put it all in cold, logical, male numbers or anything, but there you go).

But before you walk away from the conversation feeling like you got away with something, be aware that the eventual "talk" gets longer and more traumatic every time you avoid it. Really, it's best to get it out in small, preferably daily, doses.

It's in our nature as men to think of this as a painful but necessary task in the maintenance of a meaningful relationship. Like replacing the brakes on your car. Costly but rare. We should instead maybe think of it as a frequent, automatic, almost instinctual thing, like applying the brakes on your car. We've just about evolved to the point where we can handle that.

And maybe someday, there won't even need to be a wife or girlfriend in the room to force us to talk about our feelings...

He Sees the Fnords

The human brain is a fucking mystery, and nowhere is this more apparent than when observing children. How can Son take such fantastic shortcuts along a chain of deductive reasoning, such dizzying leaps of logic, yet still not remember to don't put things in your mouth goddamit I've told you a thousand times!

Last night, I surfed over to the excellent BoingBoing, where all my best plagiarism comes from. The first item on the site was something about Bob Shea, the second banana of the Illuminatus! meme. To compliment the article, there was a cover-shot of the actual trilogy, thus:


Not being all that interested in more Fnord-related Church-of-the-SubGenius, Malaclypse-The-Younger absurdity, I quickly scrolled down to see what other meaty nuggets might be available in today's BoingBoing stew, so this image was on-screen for maybe one second.

Son jumped off my lap and pointed excitedly at the bookshelf next to my desk. "Daddy! Daddy! It's right there!". I didn't immediately realize what he was talking about, so he grabbed the mouse and scrolled back up to the picture on the website.

Of course, he had instantly located my copy of the Illuminatus! trilogy, the spine of which is decorated with a similar dolphins-leaping-over-eye-of-providence image. So, in less than a second, he saw a picture on the screen, realized he'd seen that image somewhere before, and located the exact book, among a wall full of books, displaying that picture.

Now maybe it's just the proud parent talking, but holy shit, my kid's some kind of genius!

Later on, while getting ready for bed, I had to remind him for the zillionth time not to eat whatever it was he had just excavated from his nostril.

So instead, he wiped it on my shirt.

A fucking genius, I'm telling you.

Extraterresticles

This one thing I did once, was I used to be a member of this dinky theatre company that put on plays in church halls. Loads of fun? Check. Chance to play dress-up? Roger that. More gay than a Liberace pool party? Right on. And, like everyone else, I'm sure, I briefly entertained fantasies of doing it for a living.

I longed to be one of those wide-eyed Minnesota girls, fresh off the bus to L.A., waiting to be discovered, but eventually chewed up and spit out by the pornography industry, a used-up husk of a beef-jerky-skinned relic, a caricature of lost innocence In A World Gone Mad. It was not to be, alas, but really, every job is an acting job, when you're expected to act like you give a shit.

The ability to laugh at myself, and, more importantly, everyone else, is the chief counter-argument to my Universal Disqualification theory. After all, laughter is the best medicine (unless you're a Christian Scientist. Then it's pretty much the only medicine you've got).

On the subject of medicine, Son spent last week in hospital, recovering from pneumonia. For a four-year-old (and his parents) this is a Big Deal. Wife never left his side, despite my attempts to convince her, except to go home for the occasional shower. So I spent a large part of last week visiting him, trying to keep him from getting bored with the hospital's meager selection of DVDs and toys.

At some point, his Yaya promised him a scooter, once again making the mistake of thinking that he'd forget all about it once the fever broke. Now, between doses of banana-flavored antibiotics, all the considerable bandwidth of his age-appropriate attention span is focused with monomaniacal intensity on the eventual fulfillment of this promise. The Scooter is forever just beyond the horizon, beckoning, beguiling, tempting. He cannot look away.

Things at work proceed apace. The recent layoffs of key personnel have been closely followed by the resignation of Dr. Dee, who has been an inspiration and father-figure to me during the last four years at Company. His kind but firm management style will be missed, and Doc, if you're reading this, I'm crying on the inside. Really.

Since Boxer was punted, a little over a year ago, it has become a rough and calloused province of my heart that receives this type of news, and so the emotional impact is somewhat diminished. But it's still like losing a member of the family. And now we wait for the inevitable organizational fallout, the hit to employee moral, the uncertainty, and the exodus.

Once you've been through this a couple of times, it almost becomes a pattern, like chapters in the old testament, or the five stages of grief, specific quadrants through which the wheel of our stationary cycle must turn, in order to rise once again to some functional mark. Which reminds me:

The Roman philosopher Boethius, one small constellation in the night sky of the Dark Ages, re-popularized the concept of the Rota Fortuna, or Fortune's Wheel. The basic concept is that Fortuna, goddess of fate, spins this wheel, bringing some fortune, and others grief, according to her whim. Boethius warns against the attempts on the part of foolish mortals to stay the movement of this wheel, for "if Fortune begin to stay still, she is no longer Fortune."

In other words, don't try to change your fate, because that's not the natural order of things. This was a convenient and popular message at the time. Peasants were absolved of any responsibility for their own misery, and kings and nobles got the message out to the proles that "hey, this is your lot in life. Suck it up." I'm a lazy, lazy fucker, so this whole "Fortune's Wheel" philosophy is pretty cool with me.

Philosophy being what it is (ie: a load of bunk), this message has largely been lost to the age of reason. Fortunately for long-buried Roman philosophers, we are poised once again to enter a new Dark Age of the mind, and the resurgence of all this old claptrap is nigh. Keep in line, don't bring water on the plane, don't make a fuss, and whatever you do, don't make eye contact. and if you end up in Gitmo, well it's just plain bad luck.

But fascist governments aren't the only trend governed by this cyclical pattern. The emotional health of any individual, or Company, can be brought high or low just as arbitrarily. And no amount of banana-flavored antibiotics will help.

I wanted to insert some horrible metaphor about "buying a vowel", but I can't be bothered.

Stop and Smell the Leaves

Buried in the warm, loamy compost of complacency, I've neglected you. But Boxer has awakened me from my blogging interregnum, and reminded me of my never-sleeping duties.

The air conditioner still has it's place in my bedroom window, more as a monument to wishful thinking than pragmatism, but even I, with my limitless powers of persuasion, can only lie to myself for so long, and one day soon I'll break down and admit it: Summer is over. In the meanwhile, don't tell me. I want to let myself down easy.

This was the end of my first week back at work after a longish two-week vacation. Family and I spent three fantastic days in Niagara falls, feeding belugas and swimming with dolphins and discovering new phobias (heights) and obsessions (water slides) and whatnot. A thoroughly enjoyable (and, when solitary, boring) vacation that saw me return to work refreshed, bright-eyed, and ready to re-commit my life to the furthering of corporate objectives, etc, etc.

Son absolutely loved, went ape shit for the water park / resort that we stayed at, while in Niagara falls. Oh yes, there will be pictures, fear not.

Last night saw the launch of an exciting new product pilot here at work, so I was at the office from about midnight to four a.m., along with a handful of other people. During this time slot, we pulled in a whopping seven dollars in revenue, most of which I found between the cushions of the couch I was sitting on. So yeah. Time well spent.

I've a feeling the twofour of red bull, heaps of pizza and junk food, not to mention my expense report for parking, will burn through that windfall rather quickly.

When I was leaving, a planned Hydro power outage left me stuck in the elevator between the first and second floors, along with IronMan. I called upstairs to Lipstick and Tortoise, who wisely took the stairs. Five minutes later, the power was back on (wehter because Lipstick pulled in some favors at Hydro HQ, or by blind luck, I won't ask). This is one of those stories that is more humorous in memory than in life.

All the recent frantic scrambling and layoffs, trying to suck the last of the blood from the stone that is our chosen market, has resulted in various initiatives to strike out into new product lines. Memo to the chiefs: may I suggest Organ-legging? Panhandling?

And now, as the week, and the season, draw to a whimpering end, and I must close one eye to prevent double vision due to exhaustion, it may be time for another vacation.

"Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower." - Albert Camus

That Deaf, Dumb and Blind Kid Sure Plays a Mean Pinball

After grumbling and mumbling for (according to Wife) an eternity about how I need a vacation (despite, or perhaps because of, my inability to coherently explain to anyone what exactly it is I do), I finally took Friday and Monday off, and tried to relax. Since being stressed out doesn't appear to be helping my productivity, perhaps some chillaxin' would do the trick.

Friday was spent taking Son to the doctor, dragging him home from the park in a thunderstorm, and generally spending some quality father/son time. At some point I texted The Boxer, wanting to see if she felt like basking in Son's radiant glory (and my own, lesser, light). She declined on the laughable pretext of being a couple hundred kilometers away, and thus unavailable.

"Ottawa, eh?" says I, "Hmm...". And so, the inspiration for an epic family road-trip was born. Wife and I packed a bag, got a hotel using some sort of mysterious "points" system, the mechanics of which elude me, and boogied on down the T-Can to O-town for the bitchin' night-life and wild orgies.

Okay, no seriously. We went for the museums. First stop was the Museum of Nature, which is just like a zoo, except all the animals are dead, stuffed and mounted. This used to be called the Museum of Natural History, but that had a nasty boring historical ring to it, so they renamed it. The dinosaur exhibit is still in full effect, thank God (that's right, Creationists, "God" and "dinosaurs" in the same sentence. Suck it!), so Son spent a good hour and a half ogling the petrified skeletons of Devonian sea-creatures and the like.

They even had dinosaur poop! Which really didn't smell as bad as it sounds, and actually had a sort of burnished quality to it, as though transformed through the magic of fossilization into bronze or (*gasp*) Gold! I couldn't believe it. Here was a creature whose fleshy bits became oil, whose bones became stone, and whose poop became Gold. Truly a masterpiece of Intelligent Design, all form and function designed to serve that pinnacle of creation, Man (or, you know, Woman, whatever.). No wonder the creationists let this place slide!

We then whipped through the other five floors of the museum in about fifteen minutes, and adjourned to Sparks street, where a Buskers Festival assailed our senses. Seriously. That guy on stilts who plays the saxophone and looks like he's gonna kick you in the face with his skinny two-by-four legs? He was there. So were the break-dancers, the guy who draws Vermeer on the sidewalk with colored chalk, the man who bites the heads off chickens, that fucking string quartet who don't seem to know any songs other than Pachelbel's Canon, the Spoon Man, the puppet-show guy, the cotton-candy lady who always has a cigarette in her mouth, the chicken who bites the heads off men, the bloody Peruvian Pan-Pipe Band (or maybe they were Andean?), and various T-shirt, slushy, and snake-oil vendors. The highlight of the affair for Son, though, was bouncing around in an inflatable trampoline at 2 dollars a minute.

Lunch was crappy and expensive, and would set the tone for all our culinary experiences in Ottawa. Maybe living in Montreal has spoiled me, but the trip seemed salted and peppered with universally shitty and expensive food.

Finally, it was check-in time, and we repaired to the hotel for a quick nap. The rest of the day was spent in a whirlwind walking tour of all the salient touristy parts of Ottawa: the Hill, Byward Market, the Canal. We finished off the night with a dip in the hotel pool, and a light show on Parliament Hill, and hit the hay.

Sunday was breakfast at Chez Cora, more Byward Market, watching the boats in the Rideau Locks, then hitting the Museum of Science and Technology on the way home.

The Museum of Science & Technology was a heterogeneous mélange of the mundane and the fascinating, the old and the new, the shiny whiz-bangery of The Future and the insufferably dull nincompoopery of "The Future". Believe me, it's a subject for a whole other post, but by way of a tempting morsel of Things to Come, check it. I came across this unassuming black box in the "History of Radio" section of the museum:

	Herald of the age of Bakelite and cast-iron, the "fathometer", I assumed, was used to gage how Fat one's "Ho" was. Not so! (I was informed by a patient museum volunteer) In actuality, submarines had this on-board to determine the depth of the sea bed, in order to avoid the embarrassment and inconvenience of running aground on the bottom of the ocean.
	Another miracle of the future: The Satellite Phone! According to the plaque, in distant 199?, "Earth stations like this, forecast for the future, would let you be in contact with anyone, anywhere, anytime. Would you want one?" Gosh, and how! What won't they think of next?

Lately I've wondered about my qualifications. (I'm not, after all, an expert.) And not in any specific way, like "Am I qualified to do my job", but am I qualified to do anything really? Be a father / husband? Be a (yuck) "blogger"? What the hell qualifies me to try and make people think, when I can barely bestir my own gray-matter from it's perpetual hibernation?

Some people are uniquely unqualified for specific tasks. You wouldn't ask a gay man to judge a "Miss Nude Hawaiian Tropic" competition, for example, any more than you would ask a Catholic priest to babysit your kids, or an esotropic homeless man with an inner-ear infection to lead a firing squad. There are some specific unsuitabilities (all racism, sexism, ageism, creedism and nationalism aside) that simply cannot be overlooked.

When you're interviewing prospective employees for a position involving, say, fire safety, are you going to hire the former chief of the Asbestosville Fire Department, or a three-time convicted arsonist? Arguably, the arsonist knows a lot more about fire.

But this isn't a question of being uniquely unqualified. My disqualification feels, at times, universal, and I flash on the image of myself, or the meager accomplishments of my life, gathering dust in some Museum of Human Nature, atop a faux-brass plaque inscribed with my various paleontological vital statistics. And the sum of my contribution to the universe will be Son. The torch is passed, and now no light falls on me.

The good news is that you can't be fired from any of the really important stuff (short of a court order, and if you're reading this, Kevin Bacon, stop calling me). Sometimes, a nearly infinite series of second chances awaits. And I figure, if a four-year-old can offer unconditional forgiveness and acceptance, then how hard can it be?

It's a fucking work in progress, is all. Cut me some slack.

Batting .750

This weekend, Wife, Son and I piled into the car and struck out to visit my parents in Corwnall, Ont. There was a local fair, with rides, fireworks, and musical extravaganzas, featuring such high-profile Canadian Has-Beens of Rock as Tom Cochrane, Sass Jordan, and April Wine. Ten bucks gets you a five-day pass, and they also have hot-air balloons! Of course we got rained on, so the balloons and fireworks were cancelled.

At some point, we borrowed some windbreakers from my parents, since the show was by the water. Pictured here is Son, indulging his nostalgia for the great old days of hockey by representing for the noble Nordiques du Quebec. The jacket's old, borrowed and blue. All that's missing is something new, and he's ready to get hitched!

So, according to Pablo Neruda, "Laughter is the language of the soul". And we've all polished that old chestnut: "The eyes are the windows to the soul". And the Three Stooges, arguably the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century, frequently gouged each other's eyes with the goal of evoking laughter. Soul + Eyes + Laughter. Full Circle.

I just know this means something, but what? This is a perfect illustration for the limits of my capacity for reason. I'm perfectly able to detect the presence of some deeper meaning or pattern, just not what that important, life-altering message might be. There is always a missing piece, always an incomplete understanding. We have the old, the borrowed, and the blue, but the new, the final tantalizing nugget, is always missing. Good thing I've never read the bible, it'd probably drive me nuts.

This evening, Son and I invented a new game called "Hugs & Kisses", which is meant to replace our previous favorite "Knees & Knuckles". The object of this new game is for me to "kiss" him, by blowing a raspberry on his tummy, and for him to "hug" my neck until I pass out. This game still retains the entertaining core of our Ur-Sport, "Kick Daddy in the Balls". We've toned it down a little in deference to Wife's express desire for a kinder, gentler Son, but ultimately I think we've made it pretty clear that such is The Manner in Which We Role, and to divert these potent energies to a course inconsistent with our masculine imperative would be to break faith with the father-son bond.

So when Wife catches us in the act of tumbling around on Son's bed, bruising and contusing each other, I try to cover:

Me: "We were just, uh, checking the sheets for crumbs, because, uh, Son was eating toast in here before..."
Wife: "Why the hell do I bother?"
Me: "If loving me is wrong, you don't want to be right."
Son: (giggle).

Go Nordiques.

The Age Of Reason

Son has turned four. Another year has passed, too few pictures taken, too few opportunities seized, etc. The normal maudlin reflections on seeing another year's worth of road devoured on the highway to imminent death is something that seems reserved for the grown-ups. So exclusively, in fact, that I've added it to my list of indicators of adulthood. You know you're an adult when you no longer look forward to birthdays.

But enough about me.

When we compare parenting notes, my Dad occasionally mentions how one thing that amazed and confused him when my brother and I were about Son's age, was the fact that the language skills were there - he knew we could understand the words he was saying - but we just didn't "listen". He couldn't get why we couldn't "be quiet", or "sit still", or "stop doing that". He would grab both my shoulders, look me in the eye and say "Boy, do not climb the bookshelves. If you do that, they could fall and kill you. Do you understand?" I would nod, or say "Yes daddy", and ten seconds later he'd be frantically digging me out from under a pile of furniture and books of my own creation.

The reason, he figured much, much later, was pretty basic, and had to do (obviously) with mental development. Just because Son understands the words I'm saying, I shouldn't assume he's able to reason the way an adult would. It's very easy to fall into this trap, because the gestalts of language and reasoning are very closely linked in our minds. When you think, you don't do it in some sort of color- and shape-based language (unless you're pretty goddamn special). You do it in the same language in which you speak. Go ahead, try it. Think of something right now. Anything. Aren't you thinking in English (or French, or Esperanto, or whatever)?

As son grows and his surprising brain matures, I can see those logical structures erecting themselves. His capacity to reason is growing and improving, catching up to his ability to communicate. Of course I'm proud, but I'm also sad. There is some region of this ever-changing psychic landscape that we'll eventually have to draw a border around, and point to it, and say "There. There was your childhood. Wasn't that nice?"

In the meantime, son shows a healthy and well-developed predilection for all things Spiderman - this, despite never having seen a movie, cartoon, or comic book on the subject - and so, of course, his birthday gifts tend toward a theme. The insidious tide of spider-themed debris that chokes the halls of our home ebbs only in the sleeping hours, thanks to the midnight cleanup crew.

You can't really eliminate it, you can only hope to contain or direct its flow, but if any scrap of arachnorabilia is to be eliminated, t'were well it were done quickly, and while the boy is asleep, or there will be hell to pay. Sometimes though, on special occasions such as birthdays, we are called upon to contribute to, rather than mitigate, this ceaseless flux of Spidey-stuff.

So, this evening we piled into the car and trucked out to Toys R Us, where we surfed the aisles picking and choosing from the vast selection of plastic crap they have there. This retail outlet, like many, is really just a gigantic warehouse-like repository for Movie tie-in merch. The flavor of the week is transformers, a pile of chromed effluvium that pays homage to a movie, based on a cartoon, that spawned it's own line of plastic crap in my youth. Give nostalgia it's due, these new transformers aren't a patch on the transformers we had when we were kids.

But if one has the wherewithal to persist, there are diverse and subtle strata that lie beneath, waiting to be re-discovered. Just as a sedimentary geologist can examine the walls of the Paraná Basin and discover the origins of those glacially striated surfaces, so too can a persistent father, and his obsessed son, pierce the surface layer of transformers detritus, traverse the dreaded Pirates of The Caribbean era, and descend, helmet lights flickering, to the depths of prehistory, and the Spiderman 3 layer.

So we walked out with many, many toys. One of these is a "web" shooting thingy that straps to your wrist and fires spinning streams of sticky caustic gray goop at the touch of a button. Of course the small print on the can of "webbing" specifically warns: "do not spray at walls, floors, furniture or clothing. Do not use near open flame. Do not allow to come into contact with skin or eyes. If product comes into contact with skin or eyes flush immediately, etc, etc."

So of course we let 'er rip. I exaggerate only slightly, when I say that this toy - so called - is the vilest abomination ever wrought upon the world of man. Instantly and permanently staining all it touched, the webbing of course flew from it's dispenser at supersonic speeds to disintegrate into a gray cloud of toxic fumes and oily glue. And so it came to pass that Son's favorite birthday present, the toy he's been pining over for two months, is banned from the house, and is only to be used outdoors, in a well-ventilated area, away from civilization, and only while wearing protective head and eye gear, non-latex gloves, and a breathing mask. This toy is banned by unanimous UN resolution. It is outlawed in places that have no laws. It is the tool of The Devil.

And everything else requires batteries, which we forgot to buy (just like every birthday and Christmas).

In other news, we has us some bikes! Wife made the mistake of musing aloud, along the lines of: "I wonder if it might not be a good idea to buy bikes for the whole family, then we could take day trips, teach Son to ride, maybe do some family trails and picnicking and such". To tell you the truth, I'm pretty much extrapolating everything that was said after the word "bikes", because by that time I was at the bike shop, putting down a deposit.

Since that momentous purchase, three weeks ago, Son rides his bike about once a week around the park, forbidden to ride much faster than Wife or I can walk, since we must protect him from perverts and maniacs by keeping him in sight at all times. Wife hasn't yet gotten on hers. She says she doesn't have time. I say she doesn't have the balls. She rolls her eyes. I ride mine to work and home every weekday. My finely chiseled buttocks can be used to crack walnuts. The ladies swoon at my perfectly turned calves.

Wife says they more likely swoon in comic relief at the sight of a sweaty, pear-shaped man, cursing with every gear change, puffing along at a walking pace and falling off at every red light, but she's just jealous (I mean just look at these calves!).

My earlier post lamenting my total ignorance on the subject of the Darfur civil war and genocide had the desired effect of guilting me into thinking about it. So I picked up this pretty decent book by Dave Eggers. I've read his stuff before, and never been, you know, "wow", but "What is the What" is a very human story told from the point of view of a Sudanese refugee. It bills itself as a "fictionalized autobiography, as narrated to Dave Eggers", which is pretty much in keeping with everything else I've read by him. So far, the voice seems unauthentic. More Eggers than Sudan, but really, what do I know? The story is still poignant, promising, and educational. Definitely check it out, if you don't give a damn, and feel like you should.

Yes, I know I promised Doggerel. I have the picture in my head, but the words just won't come. Ah well, maybe I'll put it up here anyway.

What It Means I Can't Explain

If you are a parent, and unless you have some magical talent with words (a gift, alas, to which I can not lay claim), you can never explain to anyone what this love, this truest thing, could possibly mean. There is simply nothing to which it can be meaningfully compared. If you're not a parent, you can never understand, and you're probably sick of hearing that. You think you've been in love, you think you get it, that you know that depth, but watch your child grow, and you can look back and realize that it was an empty word, love, comparatively benign. This is the difference between a gentle summer zephyr, and a Perfect Storm.

When Son was very small, Wife and I would take turns and lie with him in his bed at night, after story time, after a drink of water, and the second trip to the bathroom, and wait for him to fall asleep. Without exception, everyone to whom we mentioned this habit - parents, friends, coworkers - would tell us what a terrible idea this was.

"You'll regret it when he's older, and you want some time to yourself," they said. This was the party line, and to a certain extent we bought it. But I would lie next to him while he slept, listen to him breathe, see his eyebrows knit with concern over some dream-hurt, smell his bath-clean hair, feel the radiant heat of his little muscly body. At first we did it for him. So he wouldn't be lonely. But now we do it for ourselves.

How could I not? How could I refuse myself this amazing time and place and feeling? It's all true, of course, as clichés often are. "They Grow Up So Fast", and "Time Flies", and "Before You Know It". Every word. And this unconditional, unreasoning, unreasonable love may not be returned forever.

I can't explain it, but there is nothing - nothing - more important. My one remaining terror in life, lives at the wellspring of this powerful love: that he will be taken from me somehow.

This Post, It Could Be Better

Tonight, as I delivered unto the Golden One his nightly bottle of milk (he's too young to appreciate the fact that he's too old for a bottle of milk at bed-time), he yanked it roughly out of my hand, bonking Wife on the chest with it. Quick to instruct Son in proper manners (I can hear you laughing from here), words were spoken:

Wife: ouch!
Self (sternly): Son, say sorry to Mommy!
Son (bottle in mouth): Thorry Mommy.
Self: And say thank-you to Daddy (you know, for the milk).
Son: Thank-oo, Daddy.
Self (getting the hang of this): And say "I love you" to Mommy.
Son: I love you, mommy.
Self (trying not to giggle): And say "I love you, Daddy".
Son: ...
Self: ... Okay. Well, g'night then, sweetie (*kiss*).

The hypocrisy of me attempting to teach Son proper manners and etiquette is, I'm sure, not lost on any who know me. For those who don't, allow me to elucidate by way of an anecdote:

Today at Company marks a momentous occasion (at least for me, and really, who else is there?). Project (an amazing bit of software that I believe will be used to torture heretics during the next Inquisition) has finally gone to QA for testing, freeing me up for further abuse from the project driver and chief stakeholder, Meathead.

Everyone has a Meathead at their work. The upper-middle manager who doesn't return emails, brushes off your concerns about outstanding requirements issues by saying "don't worry about it", then points the finger at you when the project fails. He or she has unrealistic expectations that are not expressed in the project requirements, interrupts or talks over you in meetings, misunderstands most of the project and therefore misrepresents it to upper management, and basically has the attention span of a hummingbird.

Meathead is not actually evil, just difficult to work with sometimes. He considers himself a political animal, and concentrates on what he thinks is important at any one time (like most of us), to the detriment of what is actually important. So this entire project has been an exercise in "Cover Your Ass". Everything is documented, Boss is CC'ed on every email to Meathead, responsibility for delays due to unapproved changes is unambiguously laid at his feet. It's fucking exhausting.

Seriously, any time spent in a room with this guy takes about five layers of enamel off my teeth from the grinding.

Patience is the only thing for which I set myself a limit. This, coupled with the need to express myself within the constraint of Meathead's ten-second attention span, can sometimes result in some hastily-chosen words. Words that could be jeopardizing career-advancement opportunities. Often (okay, not often, but you know) after a meeting, I'll think back and wonder: was I more of a dick than was strictly necessary, given the circumstances?

Viz: I was about three tooth-layers into a meeting yesterday, with Meathead, The Directrix, and Boss Sr, to go over Meathead's requirements documentation for an upcoming project. After much semi-heated debate over the questionable sense of some of his needs, I arrived at a section of my notes where I had given up on intelligent comment, and instead scrawled WTF in orange hi-lighter.

Self: Yeah, I don't think I understood this part correctly.
Meathead (playing with BlackBerry): What do you mean? I think it's pretty clear.
Self: I mean, I don't know what language this was written in, but it isn't English.

Now, taken out of context, that little exchange has me coming off as a bit of a dick. To be fair, this document was a joint effort between Meathead and The Directrix (a capital whip-wielder and efficient task master fully deserving of further commentary, and don't worry, I'll get to her). Directrix and Meathead have both worked with me for a while and know what to expect, so they weren't, you know, insulted or anything. Still, after the fact, I couldn't help but wonder if that could have gone better.

In the near future (as soon as tomorrow, in fact), IronMan, a.k.a. Boss Jr, will be getting involved. Boss Jr, or "BJ" for short (snigger), is a genius at dealing with Meathead, as well as The Directrix (not to mention Boss Sr, Mr Clean, Laurel and Hardy, and The Cossacks), without snapping like a wishbone. Should prove diverting.

"Could that have gone better?" is a question that crosses my mind fairly frequently, usually with it's head down and collar up, trying not to make eye contact. Generally, one already knows the answer before ever posing the question (in case you're wondering, it's yes). And this doesn't just happen at work:

Self: C'mon, Son, time to get ready for bed.
Son: I want my Spider-man shirt!
Self: That shirt's dirty, we'll wash it tonight, and you can wear it tomorrow
Son: I. Want. My. Spider. Man. Shirt.
Self: It's just for one night. Look, you're already wearing your spider-man underwear, spider-man socks, spider-man sandals, spider-man shorts, and spider-man baseball cap, and you're going to sleep on spider-man sheets with a giant stuffed spider-man while listening to the London cast of "Spider-man, The Musical". Can we just wear this other shirt for tonight?
Son: I WANT MY SPIDER-MAN SHIRT!!!!!

So of course I cave. I mean, really, who has the time? But after fifteen minutes of arguing, tantrums, and hi-pitched screaming, loud enough to break every window in the house, I inevitably find myself swabbing the blood from my ruptured eardrums and asking "Could that have gone better?"

Now, I'm no expert (natch), but the frequency with which I find myself confronted by this type of post hoc second-guessing may speak to Psychological Issues.

Idea!: One of the goals of our Ongoing Game will be to express the nature of said Issues without exacerbating them. Good luck with that.

In other news, HaikuBoxer has found my muddy little hole in the internet. Time to pull up stakes, board up the blog, and move to Panama under an assumed name. Revisionist history has struck. Boxer thought the picture I had of her on the site, all sweaty and sporty looking after running a triathlon, was "icky", so I swapped it out.

This is one thing the electronic medium has over traditional forms. You can go back in time and erase, redact, tweak, and just make like it never happened. In fact, I just erased something off this very blog. Can you tell what it was? Maybe I was talking about you.

Non-Sequitur: About that money I owe you. Do you take sex?

"The Man"

So the Liberal budget will pass, as we more or less knew it must. the PQ, who cannot be seen to actually agree with the liberals on anything (since they're the opposition), must instead abstain from the vote in sufficient numbers to allow the Liberals to push the budget through. Public gets tax breaks and a bit of education & health spending. Not enough to make any difference, mind you, just enough that neither party needs to accept responsibility for the decline of Quebec health care.

And we may need every penny, if assholes like this continue to mock Darwin. America is so busy locking out the terrorists, they've forgotten to lock in their Typhoid Maries. Here's one case where the almost total lack of air circulation on your average trans-Atlantic passenger jet may have come in handy - slowing the spread of a deadly airborne disease.

There are one or two interesting personal developments at what passes for my place of employment. Boss, having called me into his office this morning and asked me to shut the door, peppered me with a rapid-fire breakdown of several changes that will be coming down the pipe in the days and weeks to come. I won't bore you with all of it, but weighed collectively, the scales seem to tip slightly to the right. Which, if I understand correctly, means six more months of winter.

To the extent any reader of this drivel is capable of giving a shit, let me explain what I do in as vague a manner as possible (to avoid professional and legal repercussions). I work at Company. Company produces digital content for a specific medium. You may already have purchased one or more of our products without even realizing it (unless you're a crotchety old bugger with no interest in this medium, like me).

At Company, I work in the technical department, developing application servers and publishing systems and distribution platforms and revenue-sharing systems and statistical reporting tools, and all manner of Java tchotchkes that appear amazingly, stunningly boring to the uninitiated. Actually, it's not too bad. And I'm moving up in the world, apparently.

Viz.: One of the changes announced to me today was not so much a change as a clarification. It seems "dev team leader" is not a per-project appointment, but an actual job title, and so a person I had previously assumed to be a co-worker actually reports to me. This has supposedly always been the case and I was simply unaware of it until now.

Rest assured, I will make up for lost time. My dictatorial rule will be decisive and merciless.

Ironman

Let me pause before going further, and introduce Ironman. No less deserving of praise than The Boxer (whom I have described elsewhere as something of an amazement), Ironman's a bud, a co-worker, a prince among men. We often enjoy a café-allongé avec lait (It's not as gay as it sounds) at the local Portuguese pastry shop, where we speak of many things (fools and kings), a lot of which will get us sent straight to hell. His sense of humor dovetails nicely with my own, and when we blather, no shortage of lowbrow bon-mots are born. His employees love him, and are planning a monument in his image, to be cast in bronze and erected in the center of his feifdom (the QA and Porting departments here at Company).

One important change is that Ironman who, while technically much higher than myself on the corporate ladder, was not in my direct chain-of-command (and therefore was fair game vis-a-vis the occasional water cooler, "working hard, or hardly working"-type conversation) now assumes responsibility for activities with which I am more than tangentially involved.

This is not so much a promotion for him as it is a reallocation of responsibilities. No one's getting a raise, no one's getting a title change. And for once I'm okay with that.

Ironman, you will now be known as "Boss Jr". How do I feel about this? TBD, as they say.

It is a recurring theme in my parental neuroses that Wife and I are not "active" enough. This sedentary lifestyle of ours, I intermittently obsess, is affecting Son's development. We are setting a bad example. We are creating a Couch Potato. So an announcement on the radio this morning twiddled my knobs sufficiently that I may actually follow up: This Saturday, at Centennial park in Beaconsfield, some sporting goods store will be sponsoring an educational Kayaking "experience" for the whole family.

Whether said experience involves any actual kayaking, or is more "multimedia" in nature, remains to be seen, but wouldn't that be a cool outing for a four-year-old? Kayaking? I can tell you, it'd be pretty cool for a thirty-three-year old. Maybe Son and I will sneak out of the house and give it a go. Wife will absolutely plotz.

Remember that one whitewater rafting day-trip we did Honey? Where you spent the day in the hot tub while I whooped joyfully down the foaming and turbulent Rivière Rouge? It'll be just like that, only more polluted water, and I'll have our child with us in an easily-capsizable kayak! You'll love it!

Maybe we'll just wash the car or something instead.

Unless it rains.

You Can Buy Land On The Moon!

This evening, Son, wriggling into his spiderman pyjamas in preparation for Dinosaurs and Dr. Seuss, voice muffled by the corner of his Winnie-the-Pooh binkie, spake unto me: "Daddy, I want to sleep in your bed".

This of course was uttered in the indescribable whine that only the parents of a two-to-five-year-old can come close to appreciating. Half of you know exactly what I mean. The other half have no fucking clue. Really. You think you know, but you really don't. Trust me.

A perverse compulsion, no doubt supernatural in origin, came over me, and I could not restrain myself. "Why?" I asked. Son gave me The Look. This was a look that seemed to say "What the hell kind of idiot are you?" He learned this look from his mother.

Too polite to express his low esteem of my intellectual gifts, the conversation proceeded thusly:

Self: Why do you want to sleep in our bed?
Son: Because I love it.
Self: But why don't you want to sleep in your own bed?
Son: Because I want to sleep in yours.
Self: But why? You have a very nice bed.
Son: But. But. But. I don't want to sleep in mine.
Self: What's wrong with it?
Son: I want to sleep in yoouuuurrrrs..

So of course I caved. I mean, really, who has the time? This, to me, represented a perfect tautology. Ayn Rand would be proud. A is A. Son, going on four years of age, has not yet learned the necessary skill of self-justification. He wants to sleep in my bed because that's what I fucking want! Why do I need a reason?

Prima facie, this phenomena seems confined to children and the insane, which would seem to indicate that the behavior that governs justification, or motivational invention, is either a learned behavior, or, if innate, is encoded in neural structures that, by age five, are not yet mature enough to allow the kind of profound self-deception the rest of us take for granted.

An adult, considering a change in venue for the evening, might concoct any number of inanities -- "Because the front room is quieter, darker, cooler, warmer, has better feng shui", whatever -- and convince themselves of that very proposition. This is not technically a lie, the master bedroom may possess any one of these many fine qualities and more, but the fundamental pre-linguistic, pre-justified motivation, rarely examined, is simple: I want it.

It's a funny old thing, the brain.

And on the subject of completely unjustifiable desire: I received spam the other day that suggested in bold type that it is now possible to -- I'm not kidding here -- buy land on the moon. Yes, you too can own a piece of our nearest celestial neighbor. Real estate speculators are apparently snatching up this valuable acreage in a land-grab that rivals that of the 1849 California Gold Rush.

This communique seemed sent from God himself, and spoke directly to the Sci-Fi centers of my brain.

As you may have guessed by now, I'm not really an expert in anything, and real estate is no exception, but as I put pen to paper to apply for the necessary mortgage, I seemed to recall some trite pearl of wisdom identifying the three cardinal rules of real estate as "location, location, location". Too, common sense tells me that one good reason to own land, aside from raising puppies or medicinal marijuana, is to build something on it.

These two basic tenets seem to diverge somewhat from the concept of buying land that's four hundred thousand kilometers from the nearest flush toilet, let alone schools, shops, and businesses.

I mean, think of the commute.

And so, common sense has weighed in, and I am swayed by it's persuasive arguments and feminine charms. Against the express wishes of co-workers and neighbors, I shan't be moving to the moon any time soon.

There are those, however, for whom proprietorship of a slice of the Mare Tranquillitas holds an irresistible allure. To such a visionary, I would wish the best of luck and ask that, fifty years from now, as they relax on the porch swing of their lunar retirement cottage, sipping their lunar lemonade and watching the earth choke to death on smog, drown in the "globally warmed" ice caps, and blog about American Idol, they try not to rub it in our faces too much.

Visionaries: click here. Realists: Have another drink.