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barth anderson's journal
on fatherhood, writing, food, and what not.
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Sunday, January 30, 2005
The kid is sleeping in unusually late. In the past few weeks, he's taken up the habit of slipping out of bed and coming
into my study for a spot of "round and round": Isaiah sits in my office chair and I spin him around while he holds his
stone jaguar, procured from Chichen Itza in the Yucatan, many moons ago.
Don't ask me. I don't get it either.
Mainly, it's just such a funny thing, having him leave the bed. Whenever he wants. Like he's his own person
or something. First he was just a point on the floor. Then he crawled, then walked. Now his field of movement has gone from
two dimensions to three. Case in point, his penchance for sliding a chair up to the dining room table in order to climb
up on top of it. At this rate, he'll be swinging from the chandelier by spring.
I'm not going anywhere with this line of thinking. I just expected someone else to be sitting in this chair by now.
Ah, I hear the young master now. He's willing his mother to rise from the dead, er, bed:
"Up. Up."
Saturday, January 29, 2005
Through a stroke of unbelieveably good luck, I went to see Cynthia Hopkins' Accidental Nostalgia at the Southern Theater last night. It's one of those rare lovely shows that can't be described or categorized - only rambled
about inarticulately. If you're a lover of bizaahh theatah, see it. It's at the Walker tomorrow in Minneapolis as part of
their Out There series, and it'll be somewhere in Brooklyn next weekend. Would love to dither on about it but that will
have to wait.
link
Thursday, January 27, 2005
After my container post yesterday, I got an email from The Mamatas, saying, " Here's a Voice article I wrote last year on container housing, which is a great interest of mine."
Funny coincidence.
Then a few hours later I get an email from The Deborah Layne, saying, "I looked at the link you posted about the shipping
container architecture... If you scroll down that page, you find a heading that says "How Do Shipping Containers Fare In Tornadoes?"
under that is a link that says "Altoona."
( http://www.srh.noaa.gov/bmx/november242001/altoona/altoona.html) I clicked on it out of curiosity and it's the National Weather Service summary with photos of a tornado that struck
in the same county my mom lives in... in the fall of 2001. One of my cousins is an EMT and she was a first responder to that
site -- I remember her talking about the dump truck that was moved 30 yards." From The Book of Revelation According
to Barth:
"And, lo, the seventh container shall be opened, and great coincidences shall spill upon the unbeliever like 19 tonnes
of coffee beans onto an unsuspecting dockworker. And there shall be tornadoes. And first responders. And, lo, it
shall be freaky as shit, I am telling you..."
~
All this underscores the fact that I really do need a comments section, don't you think? I don't mean to be antisocial
in not having one. Mainly, I've been afraid of spending any more time at this blog than I already do and if I had a comments
section I'd be checking here like a parrot pecking at itself in a mirror. I did try building the comments section about
a year ago, got stalled, the kid grew up, and whoa, now it's 2005. I dunno. Maybe I will. We'll see.
(Cut to to 2006....)
Wednesday, January 26, 2005
I was researching containers today because, while I'm familiar with what they are in relation to shipping coffee as a
unit of measurement (i.e., "We imported 4 containers of Arabica beans last quarter"), I wasn't sure how much a "container"
actually holds. One thing led to another and I googled myself here, Shipping Container Architecture:
This is a webpage devoted to listing as many examples of people using shipping containers [as] architectural elements
as I can find, in an effort to embolden people to use containers in building projects, when and where doing so is feasible
and appropriate.
I wonder if those buildings still smell like coffee....
(Oh. By the way. One container holds around 38,000 pounds of beans.)
Next week we're hoping to shift into the Shiny New Schedule, with Iko in childcare one day a week. It's been a grueling
month, not only because of Lisa's added hours at work, but because both of our jobs and various commitments have been so demanding.
Plus a few bouts of illness. Plus the bittersweet juice of life. We haven't even been able to celebrate my book sale with
a proper bash. Woe is us. But it's about to get easier now. I look to next week like the ending of a marathon run, when I
get a real writing regimen back (for the first time in over a year, really), and Lisa and I can actually schedule some time
alone, out of the house, together (Movies! Dancing! French cuffs! Conga lines! Ha cha cha!).
Anyway. Until that Glorious Future becomes the Magnificent Now, I just keep shoveling my way forward.
Some randomness:
Titanian winds. (Could just be a microphone held out of some dude's Toyota, but, hey, as flimsy premises go, I like this one.)
Sunday, January 23, 2005
A Full Day by Noon
On Friday, after a rough week of work and childcare, the sleep-spell that I put on my kid at bedtime boomeranged and
I wound up hitting the hay with Isaiah at around 9pm.
Consequently, I woke up at 330 the next morning - which was pretty cool actually. I drank a whole pot of French
press coffee and wrote for almost 3 hours. (No word count - but sometimes you can't judge a writing session by its volume
of production). I got a new short story very close to a finished, first draft which was surprising to me, since
I've only been jotting sentences for weeks and weeks, and I haven't been thinking of it as a final draft at all.
Then let's see. Oh yeah, then the cat caught a mouse and we worked at cross-purposes for the next 45 minutes (Me: Get it the
hell out! She: Snacks!). Then I went out and shoveled the 7 inches of snow that had fallen in the night, clearing
off our porch steps and the sidewalks of our corner lot. A bit grueling. When I came back inside, the boy still wasn't
awake, so I made more coffee, wrote for another hour and a half, until I heard Isaiah yelling up, up at his mama.
Then I whisked him away after a diaper change (for him, not me), a breakfast of blueberries, a few readings of The
Bear Snores On, then the hammer game (see the blogpost below), and then Isaiah told me the story of seeing the bird in the basement, which is his first story, as far as I can tell. Here it is, with translator notes:
Isaiah's First Story
Isaiah squats, touches the floor and says, "Down." [I was in the basement...].
He points at the ceiling and says, "Up!" [...and I saw something up in the rafters....].
"Da da da!" [.....daddy was with me....]
"Dut!" [...I saw a fucking bird! ...] "Dut!!" [...A fucking bird! In the basement!...]
Then he points toward the backyard. [It eventually flew out the back door.]
The End
I didn't catch up on my sleep for the rest of the day, so after about 5pm, things started getting a little fuzzy and
soft-focus around the edges.
And now I have a damn head-cold. Always happens when I don't get my beauty sleep.
Friday, January 21, 2005
I bought Isaiah a hammering game - mallet, wooden balls, holes through which to smack the balls, and a Rube Goldberg
like machine to gather them up after they've been smacked - and I spent the day watching human instinct at work yesterday.
Felt like I was watching the opening cave-man sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
When I first gave him the mallet and lined up the balls, Isaiah couldn't hit it hard enough to send the balls through
the Rube Goldberg device. But he was determined to figure it out.
The first thing he did was hold the mallet more like a knife, in a stabbing gesture, driving the top of the mallet-head
down onto the ball. Smart. That's a sharper, more direct blow, but he handed the mallet to me after he couldn't drive the
balls through. So I showed him how with a few hard smashes, and then he took the mallet back and started wailing on the
wooden balls like a serial killer. Whamwhamwham! Some would go through and others flew under the sofa. Then he handed the
mallet to me again, and I showed him how to drive it through with one wham (WHAM!), but I didn't think he could really hit
it hard enough. Maybe it was too early for him, this toy.
But the third try? He sent the ball through the hole with the first blow. I couldn't believe it. He had this completely
studious look about him, too. Absorbed. Processing. No triumph. No "I Did It" face. Just intense concentration as he kept
whamming the balls through with one wham WHAM!
By that afternoon, he was holding the mallet with his shoulder almost directly over the ball, getting his body into it, and
striking the mallet straight down on to the top of the ball, and driving it through with even greater force and efficiency.
Well, done, tool-user. Welcome to the tribe....
For immediate release:
Thursday Jan. 20th 2005
Contact: Melanee
Meegan, Fair Trader & Marketer
Peace Coffee
612-870-3440
mel .at. peacecoffee
dot com
PEACE COFFEE SUPPORTS
SUMATRAN COFFEE FARMERS IN ACEH
Peace Coffee has been purchasing fair
trade, organic, shade-grown coffee from the PPKGO farmer’s cooperative in Aceh Sumatra since 1998. In 2001, Peace Coffee Fair
Trader and Marketing Coordinator, Melanee Meegan, made one of the first visits to PPKGO of any coffee roaster in the United
States of America to the previously war torn province of Aceh.
To read her account of the Aceh community
visit https://www.peacecoffee.com/pcfg/0307/index.html#gayo.
Peace Coffee is sad to report that the
recent tsunami and earthquakes have taken the lives of many PPKGO farmers, family members and friends. The cooperative’s processing
facility has been damaged, homes destroyed, and roads to major cities washed out. Daily looting and violence, starvation,
and homelessness are realities in the lives of our friends in Aceh. To help with relief efforts in Aceh, Peace Coffee has
released “Tsunami Relief Roast” which can be purchased online for $13.50 per pound. Ten dollars for every pound sold goes
directly to the PPKGO farmer cooperative. These funds will help provide shelter, food and medicine to farmers and their families.
It will also be invested in the reconstruction of the PPKGO processing plant. In less than two weeks $1000 has been raised
through purchases of the Tsunami Relief Roast. Additionally, Peace Coffee encourages concerned persons to make tax-deductible,
farmer-direct donations to www.coffeekids.com.
To make general contributions to Tsunami
Relief Programs, check out these organizations:
www.oxfam.org/eng/programs_emer_asia.htm
www.nonviolenceinternational.net
Established
in 1996, Peace Coffee is the only 100% fair trade, organic, shade-grown coffee roaster and distributor in the Twin Cities.
Wednesday, January 19, 2005
Did I ever mention that we finally ate the pot roast? We did. We ate it. We ate the hell out of it. Lisa dolled it up
with wine, fresh rosemary, whole cloves of garlic, and of course, the coveted nantes carrots and lil creamer potatoes. There
was something about the combo of stewing meat, rosemary, and the boozy shiraz that hit me like a hammer when I lifted
the lid from the Dutch oven. It immediately put me on the shore of Lake Michigan, Terry-Andrae State Park, where the two halves of my family-to-be reconnoitered after the divorce when I was four. Probably the piney smell of the
rosemary swirling with the stewing meat. Made me long for summer and a trip to that holy ground with my son. Time to
introduce to him to the family's scred sites.
Speaking of Isaiah, I just had to sneak in and see if he was still breathing. He's been sleeping for eons. Which
is good, since I have an absurd number of writing deadlines piling up around me...but, you know, he could freakin take a breath
now and then to ease my mind.
I've been touring the store and our warehouse with the organic inspector for the last two days and, boy, is my brain
tired.
Organic inspection isn't like Health Department "white glove" inspection, in that, the org. inspector is more interested
in whether the systems in place do what they're intended to do: prevent organics from coming in contact with prohibitted substances
(harsh cleaners, etc), from being commingled with conventional items, and being able to verify organic status through
a meaningful paper trail. So it's more of a detailed examination of training logs, storage facilities, bookkeeping, invoices,
and of course the organic handling plan that I wrote some two years ago now.
On top of it all, the inspector we drew this time is the woman who trained me in "Good Organic Retail Practices," one
of the more respected organic inspectors in the country (Her husband serves onthe National Organic Standards Board)
So not only was it a grueling two-day examination. It also bore the weight of wanting to impress someone I admire a great
deal.
It went just fine, but that two-year old organic handling plan is starting to show wear and tear. She kept discovering
little variances between what we're doing in reality and what I said we were doing in the handling plan, enough to make me
cringe inwardly. Two days of tense shoulders and gritted teeth. She also discovered some big holes in being able to track
organic status from, say, the bread we bake as a finished product on the shelf to the organic ingredients we use to make it.
The system I'd written many moons ago didn't hold up to the inspector's considerable scrutiny, and while that's certainly
not enough to make us lose our certification by any means (I can still prove that everything that we use in the bread is organic
- it's just the little auditing jump from the shelf to the back room that I can't account for), it does mean I have to create
a system before the next inspection.
So it's almost like an imposed set of New Year's resolutions. I now know what I'm going to be doing for the upcoming
year.
And boy is my brain tired.
Sunday, January 16, 2005
it looks like the doula who attended isaiah's birth is going to do childcare for us. this is great for a variety of reasons,
chief of which is that she rocks. it also means that i should have something of a real writing schedule (at 12-16 hours per
week) as soon as she can start.
the planets are lining up just in the very nick of time...
the other morning, isaiah and i went downstairs to switch the laundry over, and just as i'd put him down so that i could
open the washing machine, there was a flutter of wings in front of my face. my first reaction (after thinking, minoks,
chewing on the power cables) of course was, tennis racket! because i love me a good bat whomping.
i hunkered down next to the kid and we were like two guys in a WW2 movie. "didja see em?" i asked, and we both scanned
the beams and water pipes overhead, looking for the bat. that's when i saw the starling land on the clothesline
about ten feet away. god knows how it got down there, but i pointed at it and said, "hey, what is that, isaiah?"
i watched iko's face as his eyes lit on the bird. i thought he was going to lose his shit. his eyes got big and round,
he jammed his finger almost accusingly at it, and he shouted, "dut, dut!" bird, bird!
no need to womp a starling with a tennis racket, in my book. so it just got scooted out the door later that night. it
very badly wanted get out of that basement.
isaiah is still talking about it, though. any time we see a bird in one of his books now, his index finger floats toward
the basement door and he gets this look in his eye like, oh yeah....what the fuck was that bird
doing down there?
Saturday, January 15, 2005
So we all came down with the brief yet vicious stomach flu that's been wiping everyone out. Ergo, no yummy pot roast.
Wah wah.
~
But hey. The advance arrived. (The check was written in December but it arrived in January - yeah, us retailers
play that lil game with inventory, too.) I think it finally feels real now, though I've written about it here, raised wine-glasses,
and received lots of well-wishes from family and friends. Lisa got all lovey-eyed when she handed me the Fedex envelope today
and I was sort of glazed, saying, "Oh, good it came," thinking more about our childcare dilemma than anything like,
oh, life-long dreams! I had to look in her eyes again to see why she was so excited, and then, finally,
I was like, Oh right!
The book!
So here's how it all happened, especially for you if you're a writer who's looking for some spark in a low moment.
Because I mean, hell, I first sent that damn book out the week before 9/11. It sat with Tor for a looong time
and went through a rewrite under my agents' recommendations. Then it sat some more. Whenever it looked like there was movement,
it just stalled again. By May of 2004, I figured this book was dead in the water, cursed. I sucked. The MS sucked because
the novel was stupid. And I was stupid. All the readers who'd read it and loved it were nothing but liars and cads. And
stupid.
While I was licking my wounds and wondering what the hell would happen next and being stupid, Agent Jesse called up Bantam and editor Juliet Ulman allegedly said, "Barth Anderson? I was wondering when I might see something from
him."
Boing!
Five months later, I had an official offer. A month after that, a contract. And two month after that, the coveted
and juicy advance (in the interests of writerly transparency, on the John Scalzi ranking system, mine was a two-book Not-bad/Shut-up! deal. If that's gauche of me, tough. Better to have the info out in the universe where
it might help a fellow writer than buried under my natural self-effacement.)
So there it is. The cliche is true (to conflate Paul Wellstone and Nixon): Stand up, keep fighting, and don't let the
bastards get you down.
Friday, January 14, 2005
I got a call from Agent Kris of Scribe Agency last night. The advance from Bantam arrived, my agents took their cut for strippers and hootch, and the rest is on its way
to me.
Just in time too. Isaiah, to my increasing embarrassment, has a taste for organic blueberries from chile.
it's twelve degrees below zero and it's only 11:00 on a breezy night. that means later on, win'chills will scream
in at -40 or -50. tommorow we won't even see zero.
so tomorrow is potroast day. heat up the house.
there will be whole nantes carrots stewing in the dutch oven with the beef. then there will be potatoes mashed with sauteed
garlic. there will be cold glasses of whole milk. there will be cheddar guppies. there will be pear juice. there will be salad
with cuke and sunflower seeds and satsuma slices because tomatoes stink this time of year. there could even be some wine.
there could be bourbon. there should be bourbon, but there could be wine. and a grainy loaf. and sweet butter.
that or we'll order a za, cover our heads with wool blankets, and shiver by the radiator.
either or.
Thursday, January 13, 2005
|
Author |
jenny |
|
| Result |
You scored as Punk/Rebel. |
|
|
|
|
Punk/Rebel |
|
69% |
|
Loner |
|
56% |
|
Goth |
|
50% |
|
Stoner |
|
44% |
|
Geek |
|
38% |
|
Drama nerd |
|
38% |
|
Prep/Jock/Cheerleader |
|
19% |
|
Ghetto gangsta |
|
19% |
|
What's your high school steretype?
via mamatas
If by "punk-rebel," you mean "HS newspaper geek with a Player's Handbook on him at all times," well, sure.
Tuesday, January 11, 2005
Anybody have an opinion on Carnivale yet? Should I salivate over the coming DVDs or not? I've gotten a couple semi-reliable recommendations.
From NASA regarding the tsunami and the quake that caused it:
NASA Details Earthquake Affects on the Earth
NASA scientists using data from the Indonesian earthquake
calculated it affected Earth's rotation, decreased the length of day, slightly changed the planet's shape, and shifted the
North Pole by centimeters. The earthquake that created the huge tsunami also changed the Earth's rotation.
Dr. Richard Gross of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Pasadena, Calif., and Dr. Benjamin Fong Chao, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., said all earthquakes have some affect on Earth's rotation. It's just they are usually barely noticeable.
"Any worldly event that involves the movement of mass
affects the Earth's rotation, from seasonal weather down to driving a car," Chao said.
Gross and Chao have been routinely calculating earthquakes'
effects in changing the Earth's rotation in both length-of-day as well as changes in Earth's gravitational field. They also
study changes in polar motion that is shifting the North Pole. The "mean North pole" was shifted by about 2.5 centimeters
(1 inch) in the direction of 145 degrees East Longitude. This shift east is continuing a long-term seismic trend identified
in previous studies.
They also found the earthquake decreased the length of
day by 2.68 microseconds. Physically this is like a spinning skater drawing arms
closer to the body resulting in a faster spin. The quake also affected the Earth's shape. They found Earth's oblateness (flattening
on the top and bulging at the equator) decreased by a small amount. It decreased about one part in 10 billion, continuing
the trend of earthquakes making Earth less oblate.
To make a comparison about the mass that was shifted as
a result of the earthquake, and how it affected the Earth, Chao compares it to the great Three-Gorge reservoir of China. If
filled, the gorge would hold 40 cubic kilometers (10 trillion gallons) of water. That shift of mass would increase the length
of day by only 0.06 microseconds and make the Earth only very slightly more round in the middle and flat on the top. It would
shift the pole position by about two centimeters (0.8 inch).
The researchers concluded the Sumatra earthquake caused
a length of day change too small to detect, but it can be calculated. It also caused an oblateness change barely detectable,
and a pole shift large enough to be possibly identified. They hope to detect the length of day signal and pole shift when
Earth rotation data from ground based and space-borne position sensors are reviewed.
The researchers used data from the Harvard University
Centroid Moment Tensor database that catalogs large earthquakes. The data is calculated in a set of formulas, and the results
are reported and updated on a NASA Web site.
The massive earthquake off the west coast of Indonesia
on December 26, 2004,
registered a magnitude of nine on the new "moment" scale
(modified Richter scale) that indicates the size of earthquakes. It was the fourth largest earthquake in one hundred years
and largest since the 1964 Prince William Sound, Alaska earthquake.
The devastating mega thrust earthquake occurred as a result
of the India and Burma plates coming together. It was caused by the release of stresses that developed as the India plate
slid beneath the overriding Burma plate. The fault dislocation, or earthquake, consisted of a downward sliding of one plate
relative to the overlying plate. The net effect was a slightly more compact Earth. The India plate began its descent into
the mantle at the Sunda trench that lies west of the earthquake's epicenter.
Monday, January 10, 2005
My horse is a devouring fire,
Runs without hooves, does
not neigh.
Where my horse breathes--no spring runs.
Where my horse leaps--no grass grows.
-Marina
Tsvetaeva
Samphire, AKA sea beans, AKA sea asparagus, AKA salicornia. Ever hear of it? Me either. But it grows in salt water and we're gonna start carrying it in our store tomorrow. Apparently
it passes for produce in the UK.
~
Elsewhere, I ran into revolutionary librarian Patrick Jones at the co-op yesterday. He has a new YA novel coming out this spring (I think it's this spring), and his last book was
pretty well received: Things Change. Patrick comes highly recommended from writers like Chris Crutcher and Terry Davis, and while I have yet to read Patrick's
fiction, I think he's a helluva guy and his ideas about how to reach young readers are really rocking the ground on which our libraries are built. So I have to plug him here. Buy his frist book at the link
above, watch for his new book this spring, and spread the word.
Sunday, January 9, 2005
have we ever seen them at the same con together?
sunday morning sermon
I don't talk much about tarot here, and I don't plan to make a habit of it, but I thought I'd mention that I save my
most important readings, then at year's end if I have my shit together, I run a search to see which cards and phrases came
up most frequently. So, based on 2004's lessons which were bare-knuckled, brutal, yet, ironically, very sweet at times
too, here's what advice I can pass your way.
Prepare for a train-wreck of chaos and heart-ache. But don't take it any of it too personally since chaos really
doesn't care that much about you.
Then, looking into 2005, I can cough up this:
Shrug yourself Houdini-like out of a past that no longer applies.
That's all I got. Hope it helps.
Saturday, January 8, 2005
aside to greg:
blog! (that's the imperative).
aside to googler:
tickle legolas?
aside to mark:
i'm in the pike. 5 by 5.
aside to mark again:
the med lab scene would probably still make me scream like a little girl.
aside to don:
blog!
aside to diane:
http://www.4imprint.com/InfoPages/WhyBuyFromUs.aspx (via le stinque)
aside to le stinque:
this is you. don't send me the real paranoid links anymore. it gives me the insomnia.
aside to kevin:
so...you traced your way here from the above link....well done, grasshoppa....
aside to mark again:
it's a blue-collar world. grunts in space. if only they could have gotten real grunts or at least, people you could believe
were grunts, like the first one. like harry dean stanton. yaphet kotto. vasquez is cool, claro, but is she military?
ok. that's more than enough of that.
Friday, January 7, 2005
The Meat Department boys were talking behind the counter about turning a full 3-movie LOTR viewing into a drinking game.
Rules were bandied about. One guy said, "Drink for every homoerotic moment between Sam and Frodo."
Everyone rolled their eyes, except D who shouted, "Power Hour when they get to Mount Doom! Reach around, Mr Frodo? Double
up for piggy-back rides!" And so on.
In the end I think they decided on "Drink when they drink. Smoke when they smoke." That way, I guess, you don't have
to write down the rules or nothing.
('Course, writing em down might be a good idea. You'll have pinwheel-eyes by the time they leave Bree.)
The organic Satsumas are almost finished. This makes me sad beyond the capacity for rational thought. Oh sure, some
biodynamics are on the way, and I'll buy them, but it won't be the same as Johansen Farms' organic orbs of juicy combustibility
(I almost blinded my boy with a burst of Satsuma juice this morning). Sure, the Minneolas are nice and the Clementines
are sweet. Texas is cranking out some killer Rio Stars, as usual. But the Satsumas. Watching them go is like a little
seedless Shakespearean tragedy wrapped in a kid-glove rind. Sigh.
We're entering the witching hour of the produce calendar year. The citrus, as I said, is wonderful, but the very rainy
winter that California is experiencing is turning the desert regions, where much of the winter citrus is grown, into a greasy
skating rink. The clay beneath the sand turns slick in the infrequent rains, making it difficult to get harvesting machines
into the fields - meaning that while the quality will be good due to the rare rain, the flow of citrus to me will be hampered.
Soon will I, your humble fruit-bat narrator, be stranded on the desert island of the upper Midwest, with only crunchy, flavorless
strawberries from San Diego and mushy apples from British Columbia to eat. By late March, we Minnesotans will be wrestling
over limp parsnips like prisoners in a gulag.
O, the humanity.
Thursday, January 6, 2005
The NAS report will likely set a recommended allowable limit on perchlorate in drinking water and food, because no one
can agree, currently, on how dangerous eating rocket fuel is. For example, the Department of Defense, which has an invested
interest in protecting its weapons and rocket fuel manufacturers, says that 200 parts per billion is safe. Meanwhile, California,
which has over 350 perchlorate-contaminated wells, says 6 ppb is their state limit. Shockingly, the DoD agreed to that limit
and is willing to talk clean-up. This is an amazing development and, to me, says just how dangerous and extensive the perchlorate
contamination is. But Massachusetts set a state level of 1 ppb, while some scientists say that perchlorate isn't dangerous
even at hundreds of parts per billion.
Wednesday, January 5, 2005
Isaiah has had the cough that everyone in Minnesota has, so his labored breathing makes it hard for him to nurse, sleep,
etc. Rough time for the boy.
Two nights ago, it was a real war trying to get him to sleep. His mom nurses him for a while, and then after about a
half-hour, if he's not asleep, enter the daddio. We don't want Isaiah relying too heavily on nursing to fall asleep, so once
I take him, it pretty much falls to me to get him there.
So I had him. I mean I had him asleep. He was done. Gone. Light's out. KO. Limp in my arms - Jesus in the Pieta.
I put him down on the bed and, damnit: boing! The eyelids flip open and he starts looking around the room like he
just arrived at a party. God, there's nothing more demoralizing than rocking a baby for a half-hour only to have him betray
you with wakefullness like that. So I hauled him out of bed and started over with all my charms and sleep spells. The
Star-Spangled Banner. Obi-Wan's Theme. Swing Low Sweet Chariot. Edelweiss. By the third verse
of Edelweiss, his eyes start drooping. But he was fighting sleep so hard. He was fighting so hard that he reminded
me, god knows why, of Ricardo Montalban at the end of Star Trek II, when Khan is dragging himself up to
the Genesis device, a bloody wreck, beaten, but struggling to keep fighting. And that scene always makes me laugh (bloody
hand appearing over the Genesis device, shaking, then Ricardo appearing - I mean, I lose it every time). That's when I realize
that my brain has turned against me. Foul, trecherous brain! Isaiah is finally on the brink of sleep, his eyes are doing the
droop, drooop, droooop toward sleepytime, and I'm on the verge of hysterical laughter. I have to turn my head,
crank it all the way away from him so he doesn't see me smiling, biting my lips and the insides of my cheeks. I'm holding
back with my very internal organs in order to keep Isaiah from snapping out of his fall to sleep. It's not funny!
I keep telling myself in a mantra. Not funny! Not funny! He's not Ricardo Montalban. He's a little boy. KHAAAAAAAN!
And then my evil, double-crossing brain starts thinking of other things that aren't funny. Random, irrelevent, and very,
very unfunny things. Like the time I was out drinking with a bunch of social workers who worked with mentally disabled adults,
and how, at closing time when they were ripped to high-heaven, one admitted that he secretly referred to clients as "tards."
I mean that's not very fucking funny, man. Tard? Tard? Tard is not a funny word and calling mentally disabled people TARD
is not funny, not one little bit. TARD. TARD. TARD. Calling a mentally disabled person tard is downright mean, asshole,
so don't you laugh, don't you laugh at that, stop it, stop it, stop it or you'll wake up the goddamn baby!
"Swing loooow...."
And reet is not funny either. Reet is NOT a funny thing to call a tard. REET. REET. REET.
And the story about the client who, when asked how he was doing, always answered, "I'm havin' as much fun as a dog
on a slide."
TARD. REET. DOG ON A SLIDE. TARD. REET. DOG ON A SLIDE. TARD. REET. DOG ON A SLIDE. TARD. REET. DOG
ON A SLIDE.
But yea, though I walk through the valley of forbidden epithets, I shall fear no church-laughter. Call me Hercules,
for I, your humble narrator, faced with the evil crap inside my own mind, did in fact put the boy down gently upon the bed
and laid him there to sleep, at last.
Then I ran out into the hallway and laughed like a lunatic for 15 minutes straight.
Monday, January 3, 2005
We finished watching the extended version of Return of the King this weekend (Isaiah was a little under the
weather). Of the three extended versions, I had the highest hopes for this one, but I was pretty disappointed by the longer
RotK. Fifty minutes were added, but none in sections where we needed them most. It just seemed like one of those
director's cuts where you find yourself going, "yeah, well, I see why that scene got cut."
(Spoilers below)
There's lots to appreciate. I liked the sarcastic and mocking Mouth of Sauron (though the scene itself didn't really carry much
dramatic weight and was understandably cut) and Aragorn speaking to Sauron through the palantir was both well executed
and very necessary to a movie called Return of the King. I thought the death of Saruman worked just fine - not great,
but we needed closure to that part of the story. And I appreciated the face off between Gandalf and the Lord of the Nazgul
in Minas Tirith.
But where we really needed the extra minutes was in the story after the ring is destroyed. As others have pointed
out, Jackson created one long movie, not three - so decelerating from 10+ hours with a half-hour ending is whip-lash quick.
Besides, did we really need a drinking game between Gimli and Legolas? Added dwarf-as-comic-relief tedium? More footage of
animated green ghosts? These aren't unforgiveable additions, but Frodo boarding the ship for the West is still virtually
nonsensical in this extended edition. A strange choice, to leave that ending as is, without much in the narrative to introduce
or support it. Plus it makes you wonder what this LotR was ultimately about, if not the redemption of Frodo after
his collossal fuck-up at the Cracks of Doom. Really, all we needed was another voice over (as much as I despise the device)
from Galadriel to bracket the narrative and explain a bit more why the Elves leave, where they're going, and why Frodo and
Bilbo "get" to go, too. As is, Jackson and the gang are just hoping it all hangs together in the end in order to redeem their
swell battle scenes, I guess.
So. The filmmakers were big ol' Tolkein geeks who couldn't see the forest from the trees by the end of the project. Big
surprise. This big ol' Tolkein geek will just have to wait for the extended-extended edition, when Peter has to revisit this
story, perhaps, out of financial need. And I'll gladly buy up the 15-hour version, whenever it comes. I just hope for Pete's
sake that he's saved the footage with which he might complete the movie as it deserves to be completed.
"I appreciated reading your story, Mr Jackson. Alas, the last scene didn't grab me, so I have to pass on this one. What's
all the boat stuff in the ending about? Try me again with your next effort."
Sunday, January 2, 2005
Some Kids Books I'd Recommend
Some of these are board books, some are picture books, but all of them are either my son's faves or faves of lisa's and
mine. The starred titles are books you might pick up, whether you have kids or not.
Isaiah is transfixed by the two wordless books that we own (and so am I). This one is a metafiction - a little girl finds
a red picture book, opens it, and sees a little boy on a beach discovering a picture book. He, meanwhile, sees the little
girl in her classroom, and the moment they see each other is wondrous, surreal. I wasn't sure if Isaiah would get this, but
he does, and asks for the story over and over. I'm sure that partly he's responding to his parents' delight in the story,
but he also loves the ending, too, when the two children wind up playing together. That, or he just likes a good story
about a book.
It's the metafiction-as-magic told in images that gets me. I totally feel transported away when I read this one.
I linked to the "look inside" feature for this book on Amazon because I hope you'll glance at the images - the paintings
are fantastic, in all senses. Another wordless story, this one is about a kid who goes to the top of the Empire State Building
and befriends a cloud. Highly imaginitive, in the best traditions of children's literature, this contributes to the this-is-how-the-world-really-works
school of magical lit.
It's really odd how much Isaiah loves these two wordless stories, since all the other books that he adores are told
with heavy, toe-tapping rhythm. It's his keen mind and eclectic palette, obviously.
This book is a bit Wonderful World of Disney for my taste but the kid loves it. The redeemable part is the bouncing meter,
which makes it fun to read. Plus it's about the joy of food and the value of feasting heartily with friends in the middle
of winter, two values that will serve a young Minnesotan well.
This was one of Isaiah's first favorites, and I'm surprised how he still asks for it. A Brazilian story along the lines
of the ant and the grasshopper, this one doesn't have the punitive message of the European fable. It just explains why the
monkeys are the little partiers they are. Van Laan writes a fun rhythm without leaning on Dr Seuss at all.
It's a story about a cat, but rather than overly anthropomorphizing Ginger a la Disney, Voake perfectly captures the
essence of catness. Ginger's posture and poses are all highly realistic, and the moments of real personality that shine through
are the very moments one cherishes with one's own cats. There's a drawing of Ginger glaring at a new kitten encroaching on
Ginger's territory that makes me laugh every time I see it - the snotty disdain of a diva cat wishing hate on her rival.
Iko loves the Ginger series.
Written by the man who brought you The Way Things Work (a must own for all curious minds), Black and White
is a real trickster of a story, with four narratives told simultaneously that may or may not have anything to do with each
other, depending (and now the moral!) on your unique point of view. This book changes every time you read it, and never fails
to please the kids who pick it up. It's a bit old for Isaiah, but I can tell already that he'll grow into it.
Even if you don't have kids, buy this book and leave it out the next time you have friends over, and just watch their
reactions as they get a load of this one. The paintings are astonishingly beautiful - any plate in this book could (should) be
framed. The rabbits are a colonizing menace in this story, slowly taking over the world. It's a story told with haunting,
fascistic imagery that may reminded you of Maus, but Australian Tan's images are rendered far more imaginitively
(simply because it's not so specific an allegory as the powerful and pointed Maus).
I ask you: "Who will save us from the rabbits?"
Continuing the themes of fascism and/or the burdensome oppression of normality (your choice), Artist of the Future winner
Tan also does the text for this one and shows us the relationship between a boy and his...thing. It's an alien something that's
part industrial scrap metal, part crab (?). The Lost Thing is a story with a bone-breaking brutality just
under the surface that also feeds a belief in human decency, portrayed in the little boy's efforts to find where this critter
belongs. You'll see shadows of Hieronymous Bosch, as well as a very natural synthesis of Hopper and Dali in the landscapes.
Magnificent.
(At some point I'll have devote a whole post to Peter Sis. His books are too complex for Iko right now, but we've had a collection of them for years, and I look forward to the day
when he discovers them for himself.)
Saturday, January 1, 2005
damn it. i was feeling so vane about my compost heap. last week, before the big freeze, it was literally steaming
in the cold air, the microbes were eating so lustily. but then the temp dropped to absolute zero for about a week, we went
on our lil wisconsin vay-kay, and whammo: winter threw the kaibosh on my compost. i tried turning the pile earlier this week,
but, alas, it was rock solid. it's not dead, of course. once spring comes, the compost will thaw, and all my little microbial
buddies will go back to eating and emitting, eating and emitting. i was just hoping that the heap would keep up the anaerobiosis
throughout the winter months, so that come may, i'd have a nice bed of compost to spread on our garden.
winter 1. barth 0.
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