Benj (& Purge)

On the Phone (Again)

2012-01-30T17:34:00.000-05:00

Sometime last week, I hit the two-year mark of owning a prepaid cellular phone. I wrote here about making the switch from our monthly pay-ahead Sprint plan to a prepaid plan with Tracfone. I also wrote at the one-year mark (see here) to report that the switch was saving us loads of money. Now that another year has passed, the savings are even more impressive. So, I thought I’d write about it all again.

As a reminder, back when Melanie and I were with Sprint, we had one mobile phone and paid for the cheapest monthly plan that Sprint had to offer. After the myriad taxes and fees that get tacked on to the basic monthly service fee, we were paying nearly $50 per month for one heavily underused phone.

In January 2010, Melanie and I bought two new mobile phones with Tracfone. The phones cost us $20 and came with 200 minutes of prepaid talk time. To keep our phones active, all we have to do is reload each phone before it runs out of minutes and/or before the service date for that phone ends. Every time you add minutes to the phone, it adds 90 days to your service period. Thus, you are stuck buying more minutes every 90 days, even if you don’t yet need them, just to keep your phone active. On the other hand, if you need to buy more minutes after just 30 days, you’ll still be extending your original service expiration date by 90 days. The service days can accumulate, in other words. So, if you add minutes to your phone on 10 different occasions, even if it’s within 10 days, you’ll have added 900 service days to your phone. Anyway, when we activated our phones, we were given more than 90 days of service to begin with. I lucked out with literally years’ worth of time on my phone. Right now, I have 1,275 days (or 3 ½ years) left until my service expires, provided I keep my phone loaded with minutes. (Melanie didn’t get so lucky and has actually had to buy minutes just to extend her service date.)

Of course, the whole point of changing to prepaid cell phones was to save us money. Has that been accomplished? Yes, indeed. The more minutes you buy at a time, the cheaper each minute is. Thus, Melanie and I have typically bought 900 minutes at a time, which costs $80. It sounds like a lot when you’re paying for the minutes, but in my case, 900 minutes last nearly forever. I’ve reloaded my phone only twice since purchasing it, and as I write this, I’ve barely made it through half of the second batch of minutes that I bought. Adding it all up, including the initial $20 that it cost to buy my phone, prorating my minutes so as to be accurate in my estimate, I have calculated that my cell phone is costing me about $6.07 per month (not including tax, which probably adds about $.25 per month). That means that even if Melanie is burning through 450 minutes per month (which she’s not), we’re breaking even compared to our Sprint days. I honestly don’t know just how many times we’ve had to reload Melanie’s phone, but it has been at least a couple of times more than mine. Still, I’d be surprised if we’re spending even $20 per month for us both to have phones. It’s probably much closer to $15. I once again rejoice in our decision.

While I think the Tracfone service has gotten better over the last two years, it hasn’t been as reliable as Sprint. Nothing has been problematic enough to make us look elsewhere, but I’m happy to hear from anybody out there who believes Melanie and I could both have cell phones, with even better service, and pay this little for it. I’m not committed to Tracfone, and in fact I was quite pleased with Sprint’s service. It’s just that Tracfone has made more sense for us than anything else thus far. (Or is it that Tracfone has made more cents for us? LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!!!!)

Movie Review: Real Steel

2012-01-26T15:06:00.000-05:00

Real Steel
(PG-13)
Directed by Shawn Levy
Running Time: 127 minutes
Originally Released: October 7, 2011

* * ½ (out of four)

In the far distant future – the year 2020 to be precise – there aren’t any boxing champions. Not human boxing champions, anyway. The human version of the sport has gone extinct, with robot boxing now ruling the ring. Of course, the robot competitors are owned by humans, and depending on how fancy one’s robot is, it will require more or less directional input from a human during the fight. The most sophisticated robots can learn and adapt to their opponent’s fighting style, running mostly on autopilot, while a bare bones model must be remotely controlled from the sidelines. Regardless, human audiences love watching two bots get into the ring and fight to the virtual death. It is the human desire for total and mass destruction that has given rise to the robot boxing phenomenon in the first place.

Charlie Kenton (Hugh Jackman) is a former human fighter who, now that the robot leagues have taken over, manages robots on the amateur circuit. Charlie is something of a con man, or perhaps just absurdly optimistic, making bets he can’t afford to lose but typically does. It leaves him scurrying, continuously looking for a win while attempting to avoid the wrath of those he has swindled. Charlie also has an estranged 11-year-old son, Max (Dakota Goyo), who comes into his life after Max’s mother dies. When Max’s well-to-do aunt Debra (Hope Davis) expresses interest in adopting the boy, Charlie sees it as another moneymaking opportunity. He makes a backdoor deal with Debra’s husband Marvin (James Rebhorn) to sign over custodial rights for $100,000. Marvin agrees, on the condition that Charlie keep Max for the summer and thereby not upset the aunt’s and uncle’s travel plans.

It isn’t long before Max demonstrates a knack for robot boxing himself. The boy salvages an old-school robot from a junkyard and begins competing against more advanced robots, scoring a surprising string of victories along the way. Atom, Max’s robot, soon draws national attention, soliciting ire not only from Charlie’s past opponents, but from the team behind robot boxing’s most famous fighter, the undefeated Zeus, whom Max publicly challenges to a duel.

Real Steel is brought to you by director Shawn Levy, whose résumé includes Just Married, the 2006 reboot of The Pink Panther, Date Night, and the two Night at the Museum movies. It is safe to say that Levy specializes in making movies that are meant to have mass appeal and suffer because of it. Indeed, the list of unflattering adjectives that can be used to describe Real Steel is extensive: hokey, corny, formulaic, predictable, and uninspired, just to name a few. And yet for all of that, it is nigh unto impossible to watch the movie without rooting for Atom’s (and Max’s, and thus even Charlie’s) success. It is also a surprisingly stunning film visually, and not just during the special effect-laden robot fight sequences that have garnered the film an Oscar nomination. Mauro Fiore, who himself won an Oscar for his work as cinematographer on Avatar, endows the film with absorbent colors and picturesque landscapes that help to elevate the film beyond its mediocre core.

Acting isn’t what this movie is about, so it is probably pointless to mention it as I am about to do. That being said, Jackman does an adequate job, as does Lost’s Evangeline Lilly as Bailey, the obligatory love interest who is also the daughter of Charlie’s deceased boxing trainer. Lilly’s role is excess baggage, but to be expected in a film that flaunts rather than flouts convention. Meanwhile, Goyo is neither as charming nor as grating as many child actors, though he would much more easily fall into the latter category than into the former. Viewers may be reminded of Jake Lloyd, the heavily derided actor who played young Anakin Skywalker in The Phantom Menace. Throw in a dash of Jodie Foster (both in terms of looks and in terms of talent), and you’ve got Goyo. It’s not a flattering comparison, but it’s suitable.

Real Steel is based on a short story from science fiction writer Richard Matheson. Matheson’s novels and stories have been adapted into numerous movies over the years, from Somewhere in Time to What Dreams May Come to I Am Legend. (Matheson has also written or co-written several screenplays, including Jaws 3-D and the Gene Hackman / Dan Aykroyd comedy Loose Cannons.) Despite its more prestigious origins, Real Steel ultimately plays out like a big screen adaptation of Rock’em Sock’em Robots—a none-too-ridiculous notion considering that a Battleship movie is set to hit theaters this summer. Though there is no official tie in with the 1960s game, I imagine those with a fondness for Rock’em Sock’em Robots will enjoy Real Steel more than anyone else could. Only a lightweight will be knocked out by the film, but there are worse ways to spend two hours.

Book Review: God, If You're Not Up There, I'm F*cked

2012-01-24T15:56:00.000-05:00

Fair or not, as I read Darrell Hammond’s God, If You’re Not Up There, I’m F*cked, I couldn’t help comparing it constantly to Tina Fey’s Bossypants. Both Hammond and Fey are prominent alumni of the long-running NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live, and their memoirs were published a mere seven months apart. While Fey’s book was modestly entertaining, it was a bit of a disappointment. It favored cute and clever witticisms over candor and humility. In contrast, Hammond has penned an absorbing, emotionally frank, and surprisingly educational memoir that lays its author bare in a manner that is both delicate and unflinching.

It is no surprise that Hammond’s time at Saturday Night Live should underscore nearly every chapter of his memoir. His record-breaking 14-year stint as an SNL cast member made him a household name, from college dorms to the most famous house of all, located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Indeed, Hammond’s impressions covered a veritable pantheon of political figures—Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Dick Cheney, Jesse Jackson, Arnold Schwarzenegger, pundit Chris Matthews, and even Donald Trump (who counts only because he briefly flirted with the idea of running for president). The man also famously performed as Sean Connery, Dan Rather, Ted Koppel, Phil Donahue, Regis Philbin, and scores of others. Hammond’s notoriety as the preeminent comic impressionist of this generation followed him everywhere, from Presidential black-tie soirées, where Hammond was invited to perform as Clinton alongside Clinton himself, to the psychiatric hospitals where, as a patient, Hammond still couldn’t escape the requests to appear in character.

Little do people know that Hammond’s penchant for imitation began as a child, when his impressions of Porky Pig and others formed the only positive link between him and his sadistically abusive, mentally-ill mother. It was a relationship that would germinate more than Hammond’s vocal talents, leading the comedian for most of his life to struggle with severe mental and emotional problems, and in turn with alcohol and a wide assortment of other drugs. Even more shockingly, Hammond’s psychological turmoil was frequently manifest in acts of self-cutting, a practice he engaged in often just moments before taking the stage and performing in comedy skits on live television. An amazingly persistent talent, Hammond nevertheless didn’t always make it in front of the cameras. More than once his appearances were cancelled as he was rushed from the NBC studios at Rockefeller Center to a hospital—one time in a straitjacket.

Hammond’s tome is a powerful one, with writing as dignified as it is gracious. It’s almost surprising that the book is a memoir for as little as Hammond makes himself the center of attention. In no way does he shy away from the details of his life, from his vast accomplishments and the wealth of professional respect that has come his way. And yet Hammond exudes an unwavering awe toward all of the talent with which he’s had the honor to have worked, a relentless gratitude for all of the wondrous occasions of which he’s been a part. At the same time, Hammond openly discusses his foibles and flaws. His matter-of-fact recounting of personal weakness is neither arrogant nor apologetic nor a plea for sympathy, it is just the truth. It is a pervasive and guileless honesty that commands the respect of the reader, even when a bit of the unsolicited sympathy does manage to slip in.

I would be remiss not to mention the expert way in which Hammond fuses informative passages into his tale. The knowledge the reader gains of everything Hammond discusses, from life in Hell’s Kitchen circa 1980 to law enforcement in the Bahamas, is staggering. A copious amount of detail is woven into the narrative, but it is done so seamlessly and succinctly that you’ll scarce realize you’re being educated just as much as you’re being entertained. Nowhere is this as true as when Hammond describes the inner workings of Saturday Night Live. Even the casual fan of the show will gain an appreciation for the controlled chaos that goes on behind the scenes. Hammond’s book should be used as a primer for anyone aspiring to join the cast or crew of SNL.

It is incredibly fitting that Hammond should conclude his memoir discussing his most recent adventure, playing Truman Capote in a stage production of the one-man show Tru. As Hammond notes, the stage is designed to make audiences feel as though they are sitting in Capote’s living room, effectively transforming the nearly 100-minute monologue into something of an intimate conversation between Capote and the individual viewer. Hammond’s book accomplishes nearly the same feat. By the time I had reached the final few chapters, I realized that I was reading every page as though poised on the edge of my seat, with Hammond sitting directly in front of me, talking to me personally, telling me about his life as if I were a near and dear friend. It donned on me then that Hammond, whom I felt had alluded me in the earlier chapters, had been there all along, but with such a quiet and pleasing demeanor that I had failed to appreciate his arrival, so caught up was I in what he had to say. Without my even realizing it, Hammond had befriended me through his stories. And I can’t think of a better compliment for the author of a memoir.

Parenting and Race

2012-01-21T15:39:00.000-05:00

I recently wrote a post about adoption (see here). While it isn’t necessary to read that post in order to understand what I say here, this is a follow-up to and expanding of ideas already mentioned there.

Consider the following claim:

Ideally, children will be raised by parents of their own race.

Let us refer to this claim as the Symmetry Principle of Parenting, or SPP. Is SPP true? I can imagine some people reacting to SPP with disgust. Those people may see SPP in terms of what it (seemingly, but not actually) prohibits. That is, some will see SPP as carrying the following mandates: blacks shouldn’t raise white children, whites shouldn’t raise black children, Asians shouldn’t raise Hispanic children, etc. Though SPP does not actually entail any of these things, I can see why people might respond negatively to SPP. Something about it just doesn’t sound politically correct.

I’m not 100% committed to SPP, but I think it’s probably true. In fact, I think the implications of rejecting SPP are much more likely to be offensive than are any implications of accepting it. By denying that, ideally, children would be raised by parents of their own race, it seems to me that you are disvaluing race altogether. And that doesn’t seem right. I think most of us are comfortable saying that there is something special and unique about each race. Perhaps I am wrong, but my impression is that most (if not all) black people regard their black heritage as something to be proud of, as an inherently valuable part of who they are. I also assume that, no matter how in touch with black culture a white person may be, that person has only a superficial understanding of what it is like to be a member of the black community. Finally, I assume that the more intimate and complete the parents’ understanding of what their child’s experiences in the world are like—in one sense, the more capable of empathy the parents are—the better that child will fare in life. Now, I know this is not a black and white issue—neither figuratively nor literally, as there are more races than black and white—but I trust that my point is becoming clear. A black parent can provide things for a black child that a white parent cannot. To suggest otherwise is not only absurd, but insulting. It implies not only that race is of little consequence, which is just false, but (for example) that when it comes to raising a black child, any value a black parent might offer to that child in light of their common racial identity, can just as easily be replaced by the good intentions of a white person—a white person whose understanding and appreciation of black culture is necessarily both minimal and largely impersonal. Now, can that be right???

At this point, we might ask what the practical implications of SPP are. Perhaps nothing. We aren’t living in an ideal world, so it may not matter what’s ideal. The ideal might be unattainable, and we might be capable only of doing what’s best in a non-ideal situation. Without a doubt, it is better than not that a child be raised in a safe home by loving parents who can provide for that child, regardless of who is of what race. But if we accept SPP, it may imply that adoptive parents do children a disservice if they intentionally adopt outside of their own race for superficial reasons (e.g. to diversify, to be cool, etc.). And it might go beyond race. SPP can be extended from making a racial claim to making a cultural claim. If it’s equally true that, ideally, children will be raised by parents of their own culture, then it may be morally wrong (in some situations) to adopt a child from a different country. This is less obviously true, especially when (or, at least, if) adopting typically improves the life of the child. But again, when people adopt outside of their own culture primarily because it seems cool to do so, they should recognize that such a move may be detrimental to the child’s sense of self-worth and identity. It’s at least a possibility, one that I think merits consideration.

Side note: in writing this, I began to wonder just how many non-white parents adopt white children. More tellingly, I began to wonder just how many non-white parents would even want to adopt white children. I can’t help thinking that it must be a SUBSTANTIALLY higher percentage of white parents who adopt outside of their own race than non-whites. This almost certainly has a lot to do with the availability of adoptable children, and yet I'm not convinced that there isn’t more to it than that. I’m tempted to say that white parents are much more likely to take pride in adopting outside of their race, believing that it says something positive about their characters. Insofar as this is true, it irks me.

Movie Review: The Ides of March

2012-01-19T13:33:00.000-05:00

The Ides of March
(R)
Directed by George Clooney
Running Time: 101 minutes
Originally Released: October 7, 2011

* * * (out of four)

Not everyone holds to the same ideals. As reflective human beings, we are sometimes forced to ask ourselves what price we are willing to pay if we are to keep our most cherished personal convictions intact. Less often do we consider what value such convictions hold for us in a world that treats them as mere commodities that can be bought and sold. The Ides of March examines both sides of this issue, imparting to viewers a cinematic cost-benefit analysis of personal integrity.

Stephen Meyers (Ryan Gosling) is a young press secretary working the primary presidential campaign of Democrat and current Pennsylvania governor Mike Morris (George Clooney). Stephen is ambitious, hard-working, and carries an impressive résumé for his age. But Stephen does more than play the game—he believes in his team, and he is driven first and foremost by his commitment to the ideals touted by Morris. If he didn’t believe in Morris, Stephen wouldn’t allow himself to be among Morris’ most fervent advocates. Harmoniously enough, Morris himself is a staunch idealist, so much so that his idealism has become one of his most controversial attributes.

Paul Zara (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) is Morris’ campaign manager. Across the way is Tom Duffy (Paul Giamatti), campaign manager for Senator Pullman, a Democrat from Arkansas. As the film takes place entirely within the scope of primary elections, Pullman is Morris’ main rival, making Tom and Paul archenemies. And then there is Molly (Evan Rachel Wood), an intern serving on Morris’ campaign whose fling with Stephen sets off a string of tumultuous events.

With an impeccable cast, it may be all too easy to deem The Ides of March a “powerhouse” film. But 90% of the film’s success can be attributed to Gosling. I’ve long been an unabashed admirer of Gosling’s work, and yet I continue to be amazed by his talent. With The Ides of March, Gosling reaffirms the power of facial expressions. Think of the way a pupil dilates to accommodate a shift in the light; with an equally effortless ease, Gosling conveys a precise and sudden change in his character’s emotions. Though the change is natural, fluid, and almost imperceptible to the casual observer, it speaks volumes as to what’s going on within the character’s psyche. Hate, disenchantment, anxious fury—with the gentle lift of a brow or the nearly indiscernible tensing of the mouth, Gosling deftly conveys all of these emotions, richly, in full force, and with all of the nuanced differences between them properly accounted for. It is highly impressive, especially when one recognizes just how similar these faces can appear.

The remaining cast is in top form, although lesser-developed characters sometimes hurt the film. A recurring theme in the film is deceit and betrayal. When a mask falls from this or that character and true motives or natures are revealed, it is hard to feel as shocked as one might had the decimated façade been more firmly established.

Incredibly well-acted and directed, The Ides of March is far from perfect. It’s a slow process, bringing the film to a simmer. Viewers spend nearly two thirds of the film convinced they’re watching a fairly straightforward, modestly entertaining election movie. Then, after nearly an hour of screen time and seemingly out of left field, things start to get interesting. Very interesting. The problem is that the movie then spends its remaining time steadily building to a rolling boil—only to come to an abrupt stop. In the end, it feels like a very extended trailer for a movie I still wish I could see. Put another way, the movie does a lot of gearing up without really paying off. The slow start only accentuates the jarring swiftness with which the film concludes, which may have been a deliberate and stylistic choice on the part of the filmmakers. Even so, I can’t help thinking that the movie stands in dire need of a cinematic haircut—taking just a little off the top would give it a much tidier appearance overall.

Movie Review: One Day

2012-01-18T19:01:00.000-05:00

One Day
(PG-13)
Directed by Lone Scherfig
Running Time: 107 minutes
Originally Released: August 19, 2011

* (out of four)

If nothing else can be said about the would-be romantic drama One Day, this can: once the near 25 years depicted in the movie have elapsed, viewers will believe they have devoted at least that much time to watching the film. In fact, it may only take 20-30 minutes for audience members to grow uncomfortably antsy. This is indeed one long, drawn-out day.

In actuality, One Day derives its name from the narrative gimmick of telling a quarter-century-long story via a series of vignettes restricted to the ides of July. In a mostly linear fashion, the film gives us glimpses of the main characters’ lives on July 15th of each year, beginning in 1988 and concluding in the present. Some of these glimpses last less than a minute, while others clock in at a bulkier ten. Through them, we observe the ebb and flow of two individuals’ lives—those of Emma (Anne Hathaway) and Dexter (Jim Sturgess)—their successes and failures, their personal growth and development, and of course, their relationships both professional and romantic. Though Emma and Dexter are good friends—sometimes distantly so, sometimes co-dependently so—the question is whether they will ever amount to more. They almost amounted to more on that first July 15th, the night they graduated college and literally, but only literally, slept together. Flash-forward 365 days and the two would-be lovebirds seem to occupy entirely different worlds. Emma is working as a waitress in London while Dexter, who hails from well-to-do British stock, is making the most of his posh, playboy lifestyle. Somehow, the tie between the former classmates is never quite severed, even as Emma goes from borderline frumpy but upbeat and dedicated working-class girl to successful writer, and Dexter transforms at an even more rapid pace from prissy womanizer to equally prissy but slightly less womanizing B-list celebrity and Joey Lawrence lookalike to an emotionally-matured, deli-owning Taylor Hicks lookalike. Along the way, Emma enters into a halfhearted (for her) relationship with Ian (Rafe Spall in the film’s best performance), a daft but enthusiastic aspiring comedian, while Dexter confronts the fact that his frivolity is a source of disappointment to his father (Ken Stott) and ailing mother (an underutilized Patricia Clarkson).

Put simply, One Day is a very boring film. Watching two disinteresting characters live out a significant portion of their lives—even in the abbreviated and fragmented form this movie employs—is a tall demand, especially for a drama. While Dexter is certainly the more developed of the two lead roles, he is such an effeminate doofus that it is hard to believe any heterosexual female, much less the seemingly respectable Emma, would be charmed by him. Meanwhile, in order to emphasize the contrast between Dexter’s and Emma’s characters, the latter has been stripped of all vitality. That she might play straight to Dexter’s zigzag, the filmmakers have divested Emma of even the most fleeting looks of deep contemplation or joyful enthusiasm. Presumably, Emma is something of an artist deep down inside. But if she is meant to be a gifted writer, why not convey at least some sense of her genius to the audience? Why not tease us with her potential and get us rooting for her to blossom? Instead, Emma remains as washed out as the movie poster that advertises the film (see above). It’s all quite tragically mundane.

Life has its ups and downs, and this is a clichéd truism that One Day seeks to exploit. Yet for all of the July 15th’s visited in the film, One Day fails to find a single moment with any real pizzazz, that sparkles and shines and draws the viewer in. The dedicated moviegoer may note with stoic objectivity that, indeed, time has passed and lives have changed onscreen, but the experience is all too monochromatic. Whatever magic may exist in the pages of the book on which this film was based, it has not found its way to the big screen. And that makes the 25 years that pass between the movie’s opening and closing credits feel like an eternity.

Why Adopt? Seriously, Why?

2012-01-13T20:32:00.000-05:00

This post has the potential to offend some people. I’m not sure that any of them will ever read this, so it might not matter all that much. But I do recognize that what follows may be viewed by some as incredibly, offensively ignorant. For all it’s worth, let me say that I have absolutely no intention to offend anyone. I acknowledge (without condoning) my ignorance on this issue. In fact, it is precisely the hope of eradicating my ignorance that prompts me to write this post. This is a topic which I admittedly claim not to understand. Help me, if you can.

So what is the topic? Importantly, it is not adoption tout court. Instead, it is a certain class of adoptions—namely, those adoptions that take place in families consisting of two happily married adults who already have multiple biological children and are biologically capable of reproducing again.

I recently learned (fourth-hand, mind you) about a set of parents that fit into this category. They already have four children, the oldest turning seven within the next couple of months and the youngest being just one year old. The parents are now in the process of adopting two babies from Ethiopia, a seven-month-old and a four-month-old. (The two babies are not related to each other.) It may or may not strike you as relevant that the adoptive parents are Caucasian and, from what I understand, have no special connection to Ethiopia.

When I heard about this, my brain immediately screamed, “Why in the world are they doing that?” And, to reveal the part of my post—or of my mentality, I suppose—that is most likely to offend certain people, I admit that I cannot think of a good reason for people like this to adopt. That is, I have a hard time thinking that adopting under these circumstances is really justifiable. Put even more bluntly, I cannot help but view the parents’ decision to adopt as a negative thing, as somehow reflecting poorly upon them. Like, if they really want to have more kids, they should—rationally, if not morally, should—just reproduce. There, I said it. I don’t understand adopting when you can have your own kids. Something about it just doesn’t seem right to me.

But wait? Isn’t adoption a good thing? Why, yes, it certainly can be. But is that the point here? Is adoption justified on the basis that it is performing some kind of charitable service? Providing a needy child with a loving family and a safe home—pretending for the moment that all cases of adoption have these benefits—is undoubtedly a good thing … if that’s as much about the issue as you consider. But let’s be honest, adoption is not the most efficient way of saving the world. Word has it that adopting these two babies will cost the adoptive parents approximately $40,000. (The babies were buy one, get one at half price. That’s putting it crudely, but I’m not joking.) One might quibble with how the term “saving a life” should be understood, but various sources will tell you that donating $40,000 to charity has the potential to save anywhere from 3,600 to 80,000 lives. (See here, here, here, and here.) In short, the Good Samaritan Defense for adopting doesn’t strike me as all that plausible. Improving the world might, in certain circumstances, justify putting a child up for adoption, and it might justify adopting certain children when and if one is going to adopt anyway. But I don’t think it qualifies as a good reason for adopting in-and-of-itself.

Here’s where I get even more controversial: I can’t help but think that some people adopt because it seems cool. It’s hip to adopt, just like it’s hip to be vegan or drive a Prius. I think some people view adopting a child as somehow forward-thinking and progressive. But to adopt for this reason is, in my view, morally repugnant. It strikes me as a poor attempt at “embracing diversity.” This is especially true when such people adopt outside of their own countries and cultures. Now, if a person is going to adopt, there may be very practical reasons for adopting outside of one’s own culture—it might be cheaper and involve less wait, for instance. But is that always the motivation behind adopting an overseas child? I swear I’ve heard some people say that they’ve always wanted to adopt a baby from this-or-that foreign region. I get the impression that, in these people’s minds, there’s just something cool about adopting an alien child, the same way someone might aspire to visit all seven continents or write a novel. I have absolutely no basis for thinking the parents I mentioned above fall into this category, and yet I have no basis for thinking they don’t. I sincerely hope they don’t. Adopting a child from another country because it’s cool to do so puts adoption a bit too on par with collecting shot glasses. What’s next? Have ten children and raise them all in different religions? Wouldn’t that be cool and forward-thinking?

With my rant more or less complete, it is worth reiterating that I don’t think adoption is a bad thing. I’m just baffled by those who would adopt under the circumstances described above. I’m inclined to think that if one is in a situation where having another biological child is a viable option, adoption is an odd way to go. Maybe the parents are thinking something like this: we want to have another child, so we might as well adopt a child in need rather than bring another child into an overpopulated world. I’m highly skeptical that this applies to the couple in question (for reasons not worth broaching here), but it may explain why some parents in a similar situation would choose to adopt. I’m leery of this being the general line of thought in the kinds of cases with which I’m concerned, but perhaps it is. At least it is a coherent position to take. There is more I could say on the matter, more questions that I might have even if this is the best answer that can be provided, but I’ll resist for now. I don’t think my questions would make me sound any more open-minded or any less judgmental. I guess it’s just hard for me to think of choosing to adopt when having my own offspring is achievable and would not change the family dynamic any more than—and indeed would probably change it less than—adopting would. It might be nice to avoid the challenges of pregnancy, but adopting in order to avoid being (or having a partner that is) pregnant is a bit off-putting to me. (Of course, I am not considering cases where pregnancy would pose a special threat to the woman’s health.) So, are there good reasons for adopting even when one can, without threatening the extant family unit in some way, have a child of one’s own?

If you’ve read all of the above and you think I’m a horrible person, please reprove me. I would appreciate it.

The Results Are In - Student Evaluations

2012-01-11T16:18:00.000-05:00

A sampling of some of the comments I received on student evaluations of my teaching over the past two semesters:

“I really liked the instructor…. He made the material fun to learn and very interesting. I’m glad I took this class”!

“Very funny”!

“Funny”!

“A great teacher…! Love the course!”

“He was hilarious and kept the mood light”!

“Brings modern relevance to a course that often cites old, dead men…. Great class!”

“Extremely funny…. He makes many situation comedy jokes to help understand concepts…. Funny, educated, and on task”!

“He was funny”!

“Well knowledged [sic] … well prepared … made the class interesting”!

“Funny and entertaining, but also serious.”

“Nice and funny”!

“Makes class interesting and exciting”!

“Helpful, well-spoken, and intelligent”!

“He was great!”

“A great teacher”!

“Favorite teacher, he is awesome! So good!”

“Very boring lectures”!

“The course was awesome and so was Ben”!

“A very approachable instructor!”

“Kept classes interesting / entertaining”!

“Amazing class!”

“Straight forward, and knew exactly what he was talking about.... He knows how to make a person think”!

“He was funny!”

“He made it fun”!

“Very informed … really made you think and hone in on what your beliefs are”!

“Great teacher that is able to answer questions that were bombarded upon him”!

“Great instructor”!

“Great teacher, easy to listen to and … very helpful”!

“He was kickass”!

Book Review: A Visit from the Goon Squad

2012-01-10T19:07:00.000-05:00

More of a literary collage than a straightforward novel, Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad is likely to resonate with those with a penchant for the experimental. The writing style, voice, characters, times, places, and even layout (one chapter is presented as a series of PowerPoint-like slides in landscape orientation) shift and pitch with all the fervency of a dropped flyer on a busy Chicago street. It’s a cluttered, crowded, and sometimes disorienting journey, lacquered in a dubiously purposeful aimlessness that remains largely unresolved by the book’s end. (An appropriate sentiment, perhaps, given that one of the novel’s central themes is the ambivalent and unstoppable passage of time.) Fortunately, there is beauty to be found in Egan’s writing, even if it is often hidden beneath pages and pages (and pages and pages) of noise. Put briefly, Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad is a work littered with creativity—a claim that speaks more to the book’s detriment than to its success.

Ghost Semester

2012-01-06T12:48:00.001-05:00

It’s hard to believe the spring semester has already started. ~~Christmas~~ Winter break flew by, as always. Because I was in charge of grades and had a slew of problems not worth discussing here, the fall semester dragged on a bit beyond what it normally would have. That didn’t help. But aside from the fundamental shock at how quickly the semester break has passed, it’s a bit unbelievable that the spring semester has started simply because the evidence for it is so lacking. I spent the previous two semesters teaching, so I was incredibly busy once the semester started. This time around, I’m back to being a lowly TA, which means all is quiet for the moment. The beginning of the semester has appeared only as the faintest of blips on my radar. And though I’m sure to get busy with grading in the near enough future, I’m not sure this semester will ever feel entirely real. The instructor for which I’m a TA, who is a graduate student like me, has explicitly told me that I needn’t attend his class. He assures me that the material is so basic—it’s an Introduction to Philosophy course—that I’ll do just fine if only I glance at the readings now and again. It seems very strange to me not to attend a class the assignments for which I’ll be grading, but I happily welcome the flexibility afforded me by the lax attitude of the instructor. It is good to have this kind of arrangement when I’m heading into a semester where it will be exceedingly important that I get a lot of good work done on my dissertation, a project that has remained all but dormant since I began teaching back in the summer.

Here’s another cool perk: I might actually be able to attend the occasional gymnastics class for Edison and Peter. The boys’ gymnastics classes conflict with the class for which I’m a TA this semester. Melanie and I purposely arranged the gymnastics classes for the day and times that they are, but we did so based on the assumption that I would have a different TA assignment than I ultimately got. This wasn’t done merely as a matter of wishful thinking—I’d been given the strong impression that I was all but guaranteed a certain TA gig I had more or less begged for. Turns out the gig was less “guaranteed” and more “all but.” When I learned I’d been assigned a TA gig that overlapped with the gymnastics classes, I was quite crestfallen. But now that I know I don’t even have to attend the class to which I’ve been assigned, it’s irrelevant what my TA gig is. And that’s kind of cool.

A final note, just to get everything off of my chest. Last semester, when I taught, I had 142 students and one TA to help me out. This semester, I am one of two TAs for a class of 101 students. On the one hand, I’m extremely happy that I did not end up flying solo this semester as a TA for a class of nearly 150 students. On the other hand, I’m keenly and begrudgingly aware of just how under-supported I was an instructor last semester. I know they assign TAs based on availability and that the largest classes get multiple TAs first, and it so happens that in the fall there were two or three philosophy classes that were larger than the one I was teaching. But still. It was kind of a joke.

Christmas 2011

2011-12-29T14:40:00.000-05:00

This holiday season has been wonderful. Part of me wants to share tons of stories and pictures, dating all the way back to the end of November, when our Christmas season got officially underway. Melanie in particular has done a lot of special and fun things this year—Rudolph pancakes, snowmen pizzas, cute art projects aplenty. I know if I tried to tackle it all, I’d never get it all written and I’d end up not discussing any of it. So, I’m going to limit myself to Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in this post, letting pictures do a lot of the talking.

I was more excited about Christmas than I’ve been in years. Part of it, I think, is the fact that Eddie and Peter are both getting older and get more excited about things themselves. But I also felt more into the whole gift-purchasing process. I think I was slightly more involved than I sometimes am, but I was also more excited by the things we were doing. These feelings extend to my gift-purchasing for Melanie, too. It was a lot of fun.

Eddie and Peter exchanged gifts on Christmas Eve. They had both chosen (independently, though not without some suggestion) a Power Ranger action figure. Eddie got his favorite color—red—while Peter got his favorite color—green.

Also on Christmas Eve, Melanie had us make snowmen out of white chocolate covered Oreos and various candies. Here are some pictures of that:

This is Eddie’s snowman.

My snowman.

Creegan preferred to eat rather than build the snowmen.

Melanie also continued our tradition of having homemade soup served in non-homemade bread bowls for Christmas Eve dinner. This year’s soup was a creamy corn chowder with red potato, bacon, and rosemary. Check it out:

Another Christmas Eve tradition is having the kids open up a selected gift from Mom and Dad. Last year, Eddie and Peter received Christmas blankets in which they wrapped themselves for our traditional Christmas Eve drive to look at lights. This year, Eddie and Peter got new pajamas and Creegan received a blanket. Even I got some pajama bottoms, which was unexpected. Fun stuff!

My pajama bottoms are what you might call “relaxed fit.”

That brings us to Christmas day…

The presents before any kids got to them. Believe it or not, we had to wake Eddie and Peter up. Creegan, of course, was the first one up.

The scooters that Santa left Eddie and Peter, in their favorite colors.

The boys’ stockings prior to discovery.

Melanie’s stocking.

My stocking. One of the most fun items it contained was a tree ornament of “the old man” from A Christmas Story and his beloved leg lamp.

The table full of candy that Santa left.

The collection of DVDs and Blu-rays that Santa left.

The boys arrive on the scene.

Peter immediately nabs the bubble gum machine, which ended up being one of the most popular gifts of the day (much to Melanie’s and my surprise).

Peter and Eddie inside the colorable cardboard rocket ship that Santa brought.

Creegan inside the rocket.

Melanie showing off some gifts from her wonderful husband. In Melanie’s left hand is an incredibly sharp bread knife with which her wonderful husband sliced off a very small portion of pinky when he made egg nog French toast later that morning.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Edison Update

2011-12-22T16:28:00.000-05:00

Being our firstborn, Edison provides us with many parental firsts. That means that a lot of the awe of being an adult parent can be attributed to what Eddie does. It seems that every few months, he seems a year or two older. There have been a lot of fun developments and stories revolving around him lately. I’m going to share some now.

In the fall, Edison took gymnastics lessons. Melanie and I got him into gymnastics because it was something he was genuinely interested in. He loved it, and would often count how many days (or, in his terms, how many sleeps) remained until he would return to gymnastics. Gymnastics has now come to an end for the season, although he’ll be starting again in January. In the meantime, soccer has started. (Yes, outdoor soccer can start in December when you live in Florida.) It’s only been a few weeks, and he’s had some mixed feelings about it. (Soccer isn’t something he was especially interested in, but he wanted to try it.) Overall, I think he likes it. He’s been especially excited since Melanie and I got him some shin guards and a soccer ball with which to practice at home, and his team (the Rapids) gave him a jersey. He now wants to practice soccer every day. If I do say so myself, he’s got a rather powerful kick. I’m hoping this will be a very rewarding experience for him.

Eddie is also a great source of entertainment. He’s still not quite getting knock-knock jokes, but he loves them anyway. I recently told him the old “orange you glad I didn’t say banana” one. He now repeats it back to me in varied forms, usually something along the lines of this:

Edison: Knock, knock.
Me: Who’s there?
Edison: Banana.
Me: Banana who?
Edison: Knock, knock.
Me: Who’s there?
Edison: Banana.
Me: Banana who?
Edison: Knock, knock.
Me: Who’s there?
Edison: Banana.
Me: Banana who?
Edison: Knock, knock.
Me: Who’s there?
Edison: Banana.
Me: Banana who?
Edison: Knock, knock.
Me: Who’s there?
Edison: Banana.
Me: Banana who?
Edison: Knock, knock.
Me: Who’s there?
Edison: Banana.
Me: Banana who?
Edison: Knock, knock.
Me: Who’s there?
Edison: Banana.
Me: Banana who?
Edison: Knock, knock.
Me: Who’s there?
Edison: Banana.
Me: Banana who?
Edison: Knock, knock.
Me: Who’s there?
Edison: Banana.
Me: Banana who?
Edison: Knock, knock.
Me: Who’s there?
Edison: Orange.
Me: Orange who?
Edison: Banana, banana, banana, orange, orange, orange!

Speaking of bananas, Edison recently learned that his three-year-old friend refers to a certain part of the male anatomy as a “wee-wee.” Edison had never heard this before and was quite amused by it. He and Peter kept laughing at the idea of kicking a bad guy in his wee-wee. As we were driving home shortly after Edison learned this new terminology, he said to me, “Dad, are you thinking about wee-wees?” I said, “No, son, but I can tell you are. Just let me know if it becomes a problem and you start thinking about them a lot.” Several minutes later, after a few moments of silence, Edison suddenly chimed in and said quite seriously: “Dad, I think I’ve got a problem. I’m thinking about wee-wees.” Melanie and I nearly passed out from laughing so hard.

And finally, a couple of days ago, we returned to the Wild Adventures amusement park for which we bought season passes not that long ago. It was only our second time there, but Edison was much braver. He went with me on a ride called Aviator, which is basically like a giant swing that lifts you high above the ground and has you go around in circles at a rather brisk speed. He loved it and immediately wanted to go on the ride again with Melanie. He had refused to go on this ride on our previous visit. Even more surprisingly, after watching Melanie go on Swamp Thing, a relatively mild roller coaster where the track is above you and your feet dangle from your seat, Edison said he wanted to try it. I was amazed. I got in line to take him on it, and Melanie gave me a look of concern. She mouthed to me that it was more intense than she had expected, and she was worried Eddie might hate it. The ride was a bit jarring, mostly because it jostles your head around, but as soon as it ended, Eddie turned to me and said, “I love it! I want go on it with Mom now!” And so he did. And I took him on it again a short while later. And then he asked to go on it again, but we were already leaving the park. He has since decided that, on our next visit, he will ride Swamp Thing ten times with Melanie, ten times with me, and ten times by himself. He has also expressed interest in trying numerous other rides that he was previously opposed to trying. Wouldn’t it be funny if Edison ended up being a little thrill seeker? I wouldn’t mind it one bit.

Juror #8

2011-12-12T16:02:00.001-05:00

Note: I wrote the majority of this over a week ago. Thus, the time references (e.g. “this most recent Wednesday”) are inaccurate. I’m not going to bother changing anything. So there.

I spent this most recent Wednesday and Thursday serving as juror #8 in a first degree murder case, my first ever foray into the world of jury duty. It was an interesting experience. Considering the nature of the case, it moved much more quickly than I would have expected. They had told us ahead of time that the trial (sans jury deliberation) would last about two full days, possibly going into a partial third day. That sounded short, but what I mean is that the actual court proceedings themselves did not feel dragged out whatsoever. I expected there to be a certain tedium to it all, but there really wasn’t. At times, I was quite surprised by the briskness of it all. Several witnesses were on the stand just long enough to answer three or four questions. They took almost as long to be sworn in as they did to answer the lawyers’ questions. I was also pleasantly surprised that the trial wasn’t more emotionally disturbing for me. I feared that the kind of evidence I’d be presented with would be quite bothersome, specifically when it came to photographs. To be sure, there were some ugly images; autopsies aren’t pretty. In order to show that a certain artery was severed, for example, they’d show you a picture of the victim with the skin of his neck completely peeled back and flopping over his almost normal-looking face. Yuck. But it’s probably much easier to handle these kinds of things having grown up in an era when you see images almost as explicit on prime time news magazines such as Dateline.

Here’s a rundown of my experience. On day one, I reported to the courthouse at 830am. The fourteen jurors (including the two undisclosed alternates) were escorted to a jury room, where we were informed of our assigned juror numbers and made to wait until called into the courtroom. We were allowed to bring water into the courtroom, but nothing else. A pen and a pad of paper were provided for us and were waiting for us in our courtroom seats. (We were not allowed to keep these items at the end of the trial, should anyone wonder.) Upon entering the courtroom, we were sworn in and given some instructions by the judge. When the judge gives the jury these instructions, he does not yet provide them with a definition of the laws that are relevant to the case. This comes at the end of the proceedings, when the jury prepares to deliberate. I found it interesting that the definitions would wait, and yet I suppose this helps prevent any jurors from forming a judgment too early into the trial. This is something about which we were specifically instructed; we were told to refrain from forming any opinion on the case whatsoever until all of the evidence had been presented—a human impossibility, some might say. Once our role as jurors had been explained to us, the state immediately gave its opening statements, followed by the defense, and then without any hesitation, witnesses were put on the stand. I was surprised to see a news camera in the courtroom. I don’t know why, exactly. You see trials like this on TV, but there’s something weird about being on the other end of it, to imagine the news reports saying something about “the jury” and having those comments be, in some literal sense, about me.

The most surprising thing, in my opinion, is that they let jurors ask questions of the witnesses. I had never heard of anything like that happening in a trial before. We were not allowed to speak directly to the witnesses, but after both the prosecution and the defense attorneys had finished their questioning of a given witness, the judge would ask the jury if they have any questions. If a juror does have a question, then that juror raises his/her hand, at which point the juror is allowed to write the question down on a piece of paper that the court bailiff will subsequently collect. The judge and all of the attorneys then hold a “sidebar” (i.e. they huddle in the corner, out of the jury’s earshot) and decide which, if any, of the questions should be allowed. After a few minutes in the sidebar, the judge returns to his seat and asks the witness whichever questions have been deemed acceptable. Although I never asked a question, a few jurors did. They were usually decent questions, from what I remember. In hindsight, I had a couple of questions that I wish I had asked. They probably wouldn’t have made a difference in the end, but I think they were worthwhile questions.

We were given breaks almost every hour, which was quite nice. I always peed during these breaks, just to make sure I wouldn’t get stuck needing to pee at some point when I wouldn’t be able to. During the breaks, the jury had to hang out in the jury room (which had an attached bathroom), but a second jury room right next door was not in use and so we were allowed to use its bathroom as well. That helped, as the bathroom was a popular place for jurors to go.

Lots of people ask me about the food situation. Did the court feed the jurors, everyone wants to know? Only during deliberation. On day one, we had a 70-minute lunch break during which we were left to fend for ourselves. Most of the jurors took to the courthouse cafeteria, including myself. We were allowed to eat together, so long as we did not discuss the details of the case. I sat with two other jurors and wondered if it would be appropriate to make a joke about forming an alliance. Rather than make the joke and risk causing a stir, I played it safe by expressing my uncertainty about whether or not I could make that specific joke.

We had been told on the day of jury selection that a typical day in court would last until about 5pm. I took this very much as a ballpark estimate, because we were also told that witnesses would not be cut off and so we might easily go past 5pm if it would help us to reach a better stopping point. Thus, I assumed 5pm would be the earliest I’d get out of there on day one. I was pleasantly surprised when court recessed at approximately 445pm. The state had already rested its case by this point, and the defense had presented its first witness—the defendant herself (which I was surprised to see take the stand). Before adjourning for the day, the judge told us that we were actually ahead of schedule. This made me optimistic that we could enter deliberation the very next day and not have to come back for a third day.

On day two, I once again reported to the courthouse at 830am. The ball got rolling even more quickly than on the previous day. The moment we were taken into the courtroom, a witness was called and led to the stand. There was no dilly-dallying whatsoever. (And why should there be? I don’t know, but I was surprised at how efficient they were. That hasn’t been my experience with government-related procedures in the past.) The defense moved through its witnesses very, very quickly. Because the defendant had admitted to killing the victim, the defense was merely hoping to establish that the killing had been justified—that it was done in self-defense. To support this, the defense tried to show that a history of spousal abuse had existed between the victim and the defendant. Consequently, a typical witness for the defense was asked little more by the defense team than, “Did you ever see injuries on the defendant?”, which usually garnered a response like, “Yeah, two black eyes,” and then the defense would say, “Nothing further.” The prosecution would then cross-examine by asking, “Did you see how the defendant got those black eyes?”, and the witness would say, “No,” and the prosecution would say, “Nothing further.” I promise you, I am leaving out almost nothing, especially when it comes to the cross-examination. After about 30 minutes, I think we went through almost as many witnesses on day two as we had done the entire previous day.

By 1150am, all of the witnesses had been presented. I guess it’s lame that I didn’t realize this, but aside from the opening and closing arguments, a trial truly is nothing more than the questioning of witnesses. I guess it just never occurred to me that all of the evidence in a case is presented within the context of questioning a witness. That makes perfect sense, of course, but I guess I assumed the questioning of witnesses was just one thing that happened during a trial. I guess I assumed there might be times when the lawyer is presenting evidence and talking about it him/herself, arguing something about it directly and not via the questioning of a witness. But that’s not true at all. The trial consists of talking to witnesses, and that’s it. Call me naïve, but that was news to me. Anyway, by 1150am, there were no more witnesses to be had. The judge then gave us a two-hour lunch break, telling us we would return to hear closing arguments. I ate by myself at a nearby Subway, where I did some reading in order to pass the time. I then returned to the courthouse, hopeful that this might all be over within two or three hours.

It didn’t turn out quite that simply. At about 2pm, we were escorted back into the courtroom. Before hearing the closing arguments, we were instructed further on what was specifically at issue regarding the case. At this point, I learned that we as a jury would have to decide not merely whether or not the defendant was guilty, but to what extent she was guilty if we found her so to be. Because the crime of first degree murder includes the lesser crimes of second degree murder and manslaughter, we could technically convict her of any of those things. I worried this would make it much harder to come to a consensus, since we might all agree that the defendant is guilty and yet disagree as to what exactly she is guilty of. In hindsight, I’m quite glad we were given multiple options, because I believed she was guilty of murder but I did not think it was clearly first degree murder. Anyway, after being given further instruction, the prosecution and the defense gave their closing arguments. We were then given even further instruction and led to the jury room to begin deliberation. At this point, we were forced to hand over all our cellular phones and other electronic devices and forbidden from leaving the jury room for any reason without permission. It was about 4pm.

Going into deliberation, I didn’t expect anyone to believe the defendant was “not guilty.” How naïve of me! I was genuinely surprised when at least three jurors said they were leaning toward just such a verdict. I knew then that deliberation would not be as simple a process as I had hoped. Still, it took some time before the dread settled in and I was entirely convinced that the deliberation would end in a hung jury. And what led me to feel so hopeless? Well, a substantial amount of the time spent in deliberation was not what I would deem “productive.” After a while, it seemed that the only conversations taking place in the jury room were those between people who already agreed with each other and were merely speculating as to how the crime might have unfolded. Often, several of these conversations were taking place at once, such that some jurors were left to do nothing but cast awkward glances at one another, their mutual exclusion from myriad tête-à-têtes acknowledged by way of feigned and wary smiles. Those most frequently left out of discussion were the two or three jurors who leaned toward “not guilty,” making the pockets of conversation taking place throughout the jury room wholly ineffective in terms of reaching a verdict. I’m proud to say that I did chime in a few times and request the undivided attention of my fellow jurors, at which point I gave what I felt were reasonably articulate arguments for my view. From my perspective, much of the discussion taking place—even when it managed to be directed at the jury as a whole—was overcomplicating matters. Many of the details of the case that some jurors felt compelled continually to revisit, I felt were irrelevant. A few people agreed with me and even complimented me in my logic, but as I was already in the majority of jurors who felt the defendant was guilty, this didn’t avail much. At least not at first. Still, I was trying to dissuade needless discussion as much as I was trying to speak to those who didn’t agree with me. So I trusted that my little tangents were worthwhile.

As time went on, there were two jurors in particular who were strongly holding to “not guilty.” One of these jurors got rather defensive after a while, when most other jurors continually challenged her about her position. (The other “holdout” was less targeted, probably because she was slightly less vocal to begin with.) Once or twice, I myself directly confronted her, and yet I sincerely hope she felt like I treated her with respect. After all, there were times when I spoke in her defense—a fact I took pride in because I felt it proved that I was not being stubborn or unfair. And I really wouldn’t have wanted anyone to vote for something they didn’t feel good about. I’m not sure everyone else in that jury room felt that way. Anyway, people argued this and argued that, and several hours passed. Around 730pm, the bailiff poked his head in the room and told us he would be ordering us some Papa John’s. It arrived around 8pm, and we took a much needed break from discussing the case while we refreshed ourselves with pizza and soda.

Progress was made when we finally cracked down and spent some good time nitpicking almost every detail of every definition given to us concerning justified killing and the various degrees of non-justified killing that were at issue. Eventually, all but one juror—the same one as mentioned before—agreed that the killing was at least manslaughter. It was the question of self-defense that was the hang-up. The defense team had tried to convince us that the killing was in self-defense. Did they have to convince us, or did the prosecution have to convince us that it was not self-defense? The official rule is that the defense team doesn’t have to prove anything, and yet there was concern about the burden of proof. We actually had the bailiff send a note to the judge asking for clarification on the matter at one point. It was clarified that the prosecution must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that it was not self-defense. Had they done that? Or was there room to believe—reasonably believe, mind you—that the killing had been justified? We returned to the definition of justified killing given to us by the court. It said something about the appearance of danger being so real—not the actual danger, mind you—that a reasonable and prudent person in the same situation would have viewed the actions taken by the defendant as the only means of avoiding the danger. “But I don’t necessarily think the defendant was in a reasonable state of mind at the time,” a juror might say. “But the definition is about what a reasonable person would do, so it doesn’t exactly matter what the defendant’s state of mind was at the time,” someone else would respond. And so the haggling went, back and forth, definitions hashed and rehashed. Eventually, even the most resilient juror conceded to manslaughter. I immediately felt giddy, thinking an end was in sight. For some time, I had become convinced that the deliberation would end in a “hung jury.” I didn’t know if we as a jury could declare ourselves hung, or if the judge had to decide at some point that we were hung, but I thought that was our fate. In fact, just before all of the jurors miraculously agreed that the killing was at least manslaughter, I was about to encourage us to declare ourselves hung and be done with it. Going into deliberation, I would have wanted to resist becoming a hung jury, believing it would make our time in court ultimately worthless. But after nearly seven hours in deliberation, feeling a hung jury is inevitable, I just wanted to get out of there. Sadly, my optimism at the agreement to manslaughter was dashed when a few jurors immediately piped up and said that there was no way they would settle for anything less than second-degree murder. We had come so far, and yet I couldn’t imagine that the jurors who had resisted manslaughter would ever agree to a more serious charge. Being a hung jury again struck me as a potential tragedy, since we all agreed that she was guilty of something. Wouldn’t it be better to agree to the minimum charge upon which we can all agree?

It was shortly before 11pm when all of the jurors agreed to manslaughter. Around that same time, the bailiff stopped by and told us that the judge would be coming to see us soon. Crap. Was he going to declare us a hung jury? I doubted he would do that already, and yet I hated the alternative—that he was going to send us home for the night and make us return in the morning to continue deliberating. What happened at this point is rather interesting, from an anecdotal perspective. With the judge presumably on his way, one of the jurors asked if anyone would object to the jury joining in prayer and asking for divine guidance. Immediately, the foreperson said, “I would.” The juror who suggested praying asked if anyone would object to having a moment of silence during which people could offer silent prayers, if they wished. Nobody objected to having a moment of silence, and so we did. From what I could tell, most jurors offered a silent prayer at this point. When the moment of silence had passed, it was suggested that we take one final vote. We started by voting on second-degree murder, since that was the next level at which there had previously been a divide. Astonishingly, everyone agreed to second-degree murder. Nobody bothered asking about first-degree murder at that point—it had been clear that most jurors weren’t convinced of that, even though a handful of them suspected that the murder had indeed been premeditated. We quickly agreed that second-degree murder would be our final verdict. We alerted the bailiff, who caught the judge before he ever made it to our room. The defendant, the lawyers, and everyone else relevant to the court proceedings were reassembled in the court room. At approximately 11pm, it was announced that the defendant had been found guilty of second-degree murder.

And that was that. I was exhausted. It felt like the middle of the night. I was relieved to be able to contact Melanie and tell her I was on my way home. A fellow juror—the foreperson—had agreed to give me a ride home. Neither Melanie nor I expected day two to run so long. We were both quite pleased that, after such a long day, I would not be returning to court the following day.

One thing that I didn’t mention above is that when a jury deliberates, they provide you with all of the evidence presented in court. This allows the jury to review the evidence, which makes perfect sense. However, some of the items you are provided with are amusingly pointless. Blood-stained pillows and comforters are wrapped and sealed in opaque brown paper. You cannot see the items inside. Neither can you open these items, which you wouldn’t want to do anyway for biohazard reasons (if not to prevent retching). The point is, these pieces of evidence do you no good whatsoever. Perhaps the only purpose of having them is to discourage skepticism. Perhaps they don’t want a juror asking, “So, where is that blanket if it was smothered in the victim’s blood? Why wouldn’t that be here?” and concluding from its absence that something must be afoul in the prosecution’s case. Then again, there were certain things that were not presented that several of us wondered about—the 911 call, for instance—and so I’m not sure my theory holds.

Another fact, more amusing than any of the others: I recently received in the mail a certificate from the courthouse along with a letter from the judge thanking me for my service. The letter isn’t silly, I guess, but a certificate of participation? Really? I’ll have to put that on my CV and see where it gets me.

Muppets, Murder, and Other Mayhem

2011-11-29T13:21:00.001-05:00

So much I want to write about, so little time. I’ve spent the last 10 days hoping I’d get a chance to blog, and I just haven’t. I even started to write a movie review at one point, but barely got a few sentences in before I reluctantly abandoned it. There are just too many demands. It’s sad that something inevitably has to give, even when that thing is very important to you. I do think blogging is worthwhile, at least for my own sake. It’s pretty much the only kind of journal-keeping I do nowadays, and I think journal-keeping is very important. So, I’m always a bit sad that it doesn’t happen more often.

In case I never get a chance to write more about them, I had hoped to critique both The Greatest Movie Ever Sold and The Muppets. The former was good, about three out of four stars. The latter I took Peter and Eddie to on opening day, just the three of us. The kids weren’t as captivated by it as I’d hoped. I think it might appeal a lot more to adults who remember with some degree of detail the original Muppet movies and The Muppet Show from television (not to be confused with Muppet Babies).

I wanted to write about Thanksgiving, but the further away from it we get, the less relevant it seems to do so. Melanie covered it well with photographs. There are thoughts and stories I wanted to share of my own, but those will have to wait. Indefinitely.

On Friday, we went to Wild Adventures. It’s an amusement park located almost 2 hours from Tallahassee. A friend of Melanie’s assured us you could get there in roughly 45 minutes, but there’s no way that’s true. Melanie and I bought our family an annual pass to Wild Adventures, even though we had never been there. It actually was quite cheap, and we liked the idea of having an amusement park that is relatively close to us. In short, it’s a much cheaper, much less crowded, and much easier to get to version of Disney World. Except it’s nowhere near as splendid and magical as Disney World. No surprise, of course. Even so, it’s something we can afford to do, and I feel a lot safer driving our questionably reliable van only 2 hours rather than 4 or 5. I’m pleased to say that, despite some mixed feelings during the first couple of hours of our visit to Wild Adventures, we’re all looking very much forward to going back.

And that brings us to this week. Yesterday, I had to go in for jury selection. It was the first time in my life that I’ve ever received a jury summons. I’d heard people say that, as a philosopher, I was unlikely to be chosen to serve on a jury. But guess what? I have been chosen. Or, at least not eliminated, which by default means that I am on the official jury. I do feel like serving on a jury is an honorable thing to do, but I have felt a bit depressed about being selected. First of all, it causes some (although minimal) interruption to my schooling. As an instructor, I’ll have to cancel one of the last few class meetings of the semester, and that screws things up a bit. I’m also a bit apprehensive about the fact that I’ll be serving as a juror on a murder trial. A first degree (i.e. premeditated) murder case. Heavy stuff. I am fearful that it will be quite emotionally disturbing. I don’t look forward to reviewing evidence, etc. Based on what little I know at this point, it could be a much more disturbing case than I expect it to be. No children involved, for example. But a murder case just seems like a very big deal. Shouldn’t you have to serve on a jury for a burglary trial or something before you’re allowed to serve on a jury for a murder trial? Sheesh.

So that’s my life at the moment.

The New Pornographers

2011-11-18T16:34:00.001-05:00

As previously written, last month Melanie and I went to our first rock concert in years. One of my very favorite bands of the new century, The New Pornographers, came to Tallahassee and performed at a bar called The Moon. I’ll be honest, the concert could have been better. For starters, attendance was low, which probably lessened the energy. Second, the sound mix wasn’t phenomenal. I think the vocals could have come through a lot more nicely than they did. Third, two of the band’s foremost members, Neko Case and Dan Bejar, both of whom offer lead vocals on many New Pornographers’ songs, were absent. And finally, the band just isn’t that charismatic on stage. They didn’t engage much with the audience. (Then again, I’m accustomed to the massively entertaining concerts put on by another Canadian pop-rock band with a sexually-charged name—Barenaked Ladies.) Thankfully, I can honestly say that of the 16 songs they played live, only one isn’t a song I would claim to absolutely love … and even that one song is pretty good.

I know many people aren’t familiar with The New Pornographers. I think they’re fantastic. Their music is quirky, sometimes ornate, and yet they always retain an approachable, radio-friendly quality to their sound. My first exposure to The New Pornographers was their sophomore album, Electric Version, which upon a single listening struck me as a pop-rock masterpiece. Their fourth and fifth albums, Challengers and Together, are also near perfect in my eyes … er, ears.

In order to share my experience, and my love for The New Pornographers, with you, I’ve tracked down YouTube videos of every song that the band played at the concert I attended. I’ll share them in the same order that they played the songs at the show. Now, I fully understand that a good many of you are NOT going to listen to all of these songs. That’s absolutely fine. I would hope, however, that you’d listen to at least a few of them. (To help you choose which ones, I’ll make notes by the ones I’m especially fond of, as difficult as that will be for me to pin down.) It would be a thrill to me if some of you would comment on the songs and what you thought of them, being as specific as possible. That would show me that you really do love me. Don’t worry about watching the videos – I haven’t even watched all of these. Posting videos was simply my way of getting the songs to you. Truthfully, I’d urge you not to get distracted by the videos. Just hit ‘play’ and look away from the screen, for all I care. Some of the videos aren’t really videos, and some aren’t official videos. Have I made it clear that the videos don’t really matter here?

(NOTE: I apologize if some of the videos below force you to watch an advertisement before the song plays. Very annoying, I know. Hopefully that won’t discourage you too much.)

Moves
(from the album Together)
Note: Less straightforward rock than some of their songs, “Moves” gives you a good idea of The New Pornographers’ more complex and idiosyncratic side, what with the cello, tinkering piano, syncopated vocals, etc.

The Slow Descent Into Alcoholism
(from the album Mass Romantic)

Sing Me Spanish Techno
(from the album Twin Cinema)

Sweet Talk, Sweet Talk
(from the album Together)

Use It
(from the album Twin Cinema)

The Laws Have Changed
(from the album Electric Version)
Note: I’m tempted to recommend this one, because it was among the first New Pornographers songs I ever heard. It gives you a good feel for their more straightforward rock-pop.

Up in the Dark
(from the album Together)

Adventures in Solitude
(from the album Challengers)
Note: a beautiful song that builds and builds

Crash Years
(from the album Together)
Note: this is a very, very good one

All the Old Showstoppers
(from the album Challengers)
Note: I can only find live versions of this on YouTube, and I’m not sure any of them are worth posting. It’s a shame, because this is a really good one.

Testament to Youth in Verse
(from the album Electric Version)
Note: this will give you a good feel for Dan Bejar’s vocal stylings, though Dan wasn’t at the concert I attended.

Challengers
(from the album Challengers)
Note: this is another very good one

Your Hands (Together)
(from the album Together)

Mass Romantic
(from the album Mass Romantic)
Note: probably my least favorite song that they performed at the concert, although I like it quite well

The Bleeding Heart Show
(from the album Twin Cinema)

Letter from an Occupant
(from the album Mass Romantic)

I hope you’ve found something to enjoy. As I look back over the list, I’m not at all confident that I’ve recommended the right ones. They’re all really, really good. Comment please!

Book Review: Bumped

2011-11-12T17:48:00.001-05:00

Melody and Harmony are identical twins. Separated at birth, Harmony has only recently learned that she has a sister, a sister to whom she now hopes to play spiritual savior. Leaving her hyper-religious community of Goodside, Harmony travels to the Sodom and Gomorrah of Otherside, intent (it seems) on delivering Melody from the moral abomination that is commercial “pregging.” With all human beings going sterile around the time they reach legal adulthood, teen pregnancy is no longer considered a worrisome epidemic. On the contrary, it’s a highly lucrative business, where professional teen surrogates not only rake in the big bucks for offering up their procreative services, but are revered as quasi-celebrities for doing so. At 16, most girls have given birth to (and sold) at least two or three babies, but Melody is still waiting for the couple that signed her to one of the most enviable contracts in history to select her first-ever “bumping” companion. As time passes, Melody is becoming increasingly disillusioned with the bumping business, and increasingly baffled as to her sister’s true intentions for coming to Otherside.

Bumped is the first entry in Megan McCafferty’s teen book series set in the not-too-distant future. The novel reads like a cross between A Clockwork Orange and the script from Juno, although such a description is probably misleadingly flattering. Surely enough, McCafferty bombards readers with enough futuristic borderline-valley girl jargon to isolate a majority of those who fall outside of the book’s target demographic. But the real problem is the variation in voice. It’s not that the book bounces (bumps?) back and forth between Melody and Harmony on a chapter-by-chapter basis. It’s that the main characters seem to elude McCafferty herself, who is perhaps more worried about bringing her invented slang to life than she is the characters who speak it. This is especially true of Harmony, who reads very inconsistently and whose development throughout the story lacks authenticity. Melody fares much better, jelling into a solid character by the book’s genuinely interesting final third. In fact, given that the cliffhanger ending is less than tantalizing, the promise of enriched characters is the primary reason I remain open to reading the yet-to-be published sequel.

North Florida Fair 2011

2011-11-09T15:28:00.000-05:00

On Monday night, the family and I went to the North Florida Fair. We didn’t make it last year, but despite the fact that Eddie was only three years old the last time we were there, he remembered much of what the fair offered and he knew what he wanted to do even before we got there. Peter was rather excited, too, but I’m kind of heartbroken about his experience. Early into our visit, he tried a couple of rides that ended up terrifying him. After that, he had next to no interest in trying anything whatsoever.

I’ll share some pictures now, although most of them aren’t that great. I don’t have the skill, nor perhaps the camera, necessary for taking excellent shots, especially when the skies are grey and the sun begins to set. Oh well. You get what you get.

Edison on the carousel. You can see him back there, right?

Melanie and Peter, prior to Peter’s spirits being crushed for the night. You can also just make out that Eddie is on the horse behind them.

Peter, still in his happy moments. I have to say, watching young children try to maneuver bumper cars is a bit like watching a bunch of strangers being forced to walk around inside a stopped elevator. Nobody stops moving, but nobody knows what they’re doing or even what to try to do, really. There’s something incredibly awkward about it all.

Eddie, looking somewhat engrossed in his driving. And there’s the poor ride operator whose job also involves going around trying to teach kids how to drive and helping them get unstuck time and time and time and time and time again.

Liftoff! Eddie was very determined to ride a white airplane, as he remembered riding a red airplane two years ago. Whenever he’d fly past us, he’d call out, “I’m flying to Utah!”

The wildest ride that Peter did not freak out on. It’s nothing more than a car that goes around a track, but it speeds up just a little bit as it comes around the last curve. Is Eddie pointing out the camels in the background? That’s my guess.

Zoom! You can see Peter’s slight apprehension.

Proof that Creegan was there.

Posting this picture is a bit cruel of me, but it serves to illustrate my point. That’s a look of pure terror on Peter’s face. Edison rode these fire trucks two years ago, and we don’t remember them going fast at all. Melanie assured Peter that it would be a slow ride, but boy oh boy, it wasn’t. It moved rather quickly. When the ride started up, Peter immediately started crying and begging us to stop the ride. Melanie tried to encourage him to loosen up and have fun, but it never happened. In this photo, Peter is actually heeding Melanie’s advice to “ring the bell,” his terror notwithstanding. It was pretty sad to hear him calling out “Ding, ding, ding!” with a voice wrought with fear. It’s kind of funny that he would even bother trying to play like that. Did he just feel he had to obey? Was he under too much mental turmoil to think for himself? Did he somehow think ringing the bell would make the truck stop? It’s sad. Psychologically intriguing, but sad.

Edison went down this huge, tall, twisty slide all by himself. If you zoom in, you can barely see him in the stairwell between the two highest flags.

Touch down.

Peter doesn’t look scarred for life, right?

Eddie, descending the final slide in “Mario Land.” He’s got a cute look on his face if you zoom in.

Edison, Peter, and in the background, Melanie and Creegan.

A quick pic from atop the Ferris wheel. Edison and I rode the Ferris wheel together. Eddie wasn’t the least bit nervous about being up high. If anything, I think he got a bit bored after a couple of rotations.

Edison joined a street gang while we were there.

This ended up being Edison’s favorite ride, I think. It’s a slightly (but only slightly) tamed down version of the “Musik Express.” Melanie went on it with him first. He was incredibly cute on it. At times, both he and Melanie had their arms raised in the air. Edison wanted to go on the ride again, so he took me. It was a lot of fun, but it felt like it lasted forever. My arms and back were getting quite tired by the end of it. And my left (re: reconstructed) ankle wasn’t very comfortable in that sled/car. My ankle felt really stiff and sore the next day, and I wonder if it wasn’t from what felt like a twenty-minute ride on this thing.

Just so you know, Peter did go on a few more things. He went in the “Monkey Maze” with Edison and me, but unfortunately, that concluded with a twisty slide that, despite its relative shortness, Peter did NOT want to go down. I had to force him down, which wasn’t pleasant for either of us. He also went down a big inflatable slide, though he dilly-dallied quite a bit before taking the plunge. And finally, the night concluded with Peter and me going on the carousel together. It was a nice, calm moment.

Other things to note about our trip to the fair include Melanie and Edison revisiting the kid roller coaster from two years ago; Edison and me taking a trip through a fun house, complete with a rotating tunnel at the end; a very uninspiring and at times almost awkwardly laughable magic show; Edison’s great enthusiasm for a huge but non-twisty slide, which Melanie and I both had numerous opportunities to go down with him; Creegan’s love for cotton candy; and the family enjoying a deep-fried Snickers bar (which wasn’t nearly as good as the deep-fried Twinkies of 2009).

A Year Already?

2011-11-01T11:02:00.002-04:00

Creegan turned one-year-old a few days ago. I can’t believe a year has already passed. I sometimes still picture him lying on the floor, vomit skyrocketing out of him as if he were a broken fire hydrant. I’m so glad those days are over. I just hope hitting the one-year mark doesn’t mean our warranty has expired.

Here are some pictures of Creegan as a one-year-old.

A birthday breakfast, consisting of pancakes with chocolate chip faces. You can’t see the pancake’s face here, but you can see Creegan’s. And that’s all that matters.

Creegan, with co-creator, Melanie.

Laying claim to his birthday gift.

Look at those teeth!

Birthday cupcake!

Happy Birthday, Ben!

2011-10-25T19:51:00.000-04:00

I used to have the goal of always writing a journal entry or a blog post of some kind on my birthday. This year, my birthday came and went, and I never wrote. In fact, this is the longest I’ve gone without writing for quite some time. Still, I’ve never given up on writing about my birthday, even if I failed to write on my birthday. This is the realization of that compromised goal.

My birthday fell on a Friday this year. I don’t have school on Fridays, so I knew Thursday afternoon would feel like the beginning of my birthday weekend, and I wanted the festivities to begin right away. (I’m of the belief that adults should let their birthday celebrations last at least a week, since birthdays aren’t nearly as fun for adults as they are for children.) I decided that we should go out to dinner on Thursday afternoon, once I got done teaching. I chose a steakhouse near campus and had Melanie and the kids take me to school so they could run some errands (re: do some birthday shopping!) while I taught. They would then return to campus, pick me up, and we’d all go to dinner. It never happened. Just as we got to campus to drop me off, our van started smoking. Though the temperature gauge looked normal, smoke was suddenly billowing out from under the hood. I got out and investigated. Everything under the hood was soaked with antifreeze. A lime green river of antifreeze coursed from beneath the van toward a dumpster several feet in front of us. A Good Samaritan came over and counseled us to let the van rest for at least an hour, fill the radiator directly with water once the van had cooled down, and then take the van immediately to a mechanic. Any plans for birthday shopping and a birthday dinner went completely out the window. Sadly, I had to attend to my school duties, so I barely had time to react to the situation before leaving Melanie and the kids stranded on campus. They headed to a nearby McDonald’s, and I hurriedly prepared to teach. The plan was to meet with Melanie and the boys after class and try to get us safely to our mechanic. (To make matters worse, I had forgotten my cell phone that day, which I’ve done only once or twice before.) After class, however, I found a note from Melanie in the van, telling me that she had run into our good friend from church, who gave her and the boys a ride home. I was glad Melanie and the kids could be done with the ordeal and would no longer have to be involved. I filled the radiator with water and anxiously drove toward our mechanic, uncertain how far I’d be able to get before another problem occurred.

Luckily, I made it. The van was beginning to smoke again as I pulled into the garage, but I had made it. Popping the hood, we quickly discovered a huge hole in one of the hoses. I was happy to hear that it would be a relatively cheap and quick fix. At that point, an easy fix seemed a welcome birthday gift. An hour or so later, the repair work was done. I headed home, feeling emotionally and psychologically exhausted. Shortly after I arrived home, we piled into the van with renewed confidence and picked up a couple of pizzas, a kind of consolation prize birthday dinner.

Friday was my actual birthday. I had no plans for the day, other than to make it fun. With Tallahassee, that can be a bit of a challenge. There really isn’t that much to do here. Racking my brain, I finally decided to have us go miniature golfing. It’s something we’d never done as a family before, and it’s one of the few potentially fun things I knew Tallahassee had to offer. We went to the Fun Station, which at noon on a school day was quite dead. With a coupon deal, we paid $12 to have all of us play a round of miniature golf. The good news: Edison absolutely loved it. He thought it was wonderful, so much so that we struggled keeping him with us. He kept running ahead to play the next hole. Eddie’s enthusiasm and momentum was such that, in many ways, it felt like we had taken him miniature golfing and the rest of us were just there to watch. (Melanie and I skipped playing several holes, just to keep up.) The bad news: the mini-golf course was incredibly lame. It was the dullest miniature golf course I’ve ever seen. I’m not kidding when I say that I think only one hole had an obstacle that amounted to something more than going around a curve, over a slight bump, and/or around a small piece of wood. There were no obstacles that required you to time your shot just right. The only genuine obstacle, in my eyes, was on the 2nd or 3rd hole, when you had to go over a little bridge. The ball then ran into a little hole and reappeared out of a rock slightly downhill. But that was the only hole like that. There was no going through or under or around things other than on that one hole, with the exception of the aforementioned single piece of wood. Surprisingly lame. Here are some pictures:

No joke, this was as fancy and complicated as the miniature golf got—a couple of bumps in the road and a small block of wood near the hole. Only one hole was cooler than this. But Melanie seems excited.

Edison gears up.

And it’s outta the park! Home run!

Peter, who was happy to have a green ball, his favorite color.

Peter, perched atop the absolutely fanciest part of the miniature golf course. He wanted to stay here forever and keep making his ball go under the bridge. Can’t say I blame him.

Edison instructs his younger brother on the finer points of the game.

As Melanie would say, proof that Creegan was there. I snapped this photo while holding Creegan and a golf club. Don’t complain.

Oh, yes, and I was there too!

Wait for me!

Eddie, about to make a hole in one ... of the patches of fake grass.

Before we went miniature golfing, we had stopped at Barnes & Noble, in part to pass the time while we waited for the Fun Station to open at noon. I bought a book, which is a very rare occurrence for me nowadays (excluding school-related purchases). After we miniature golfed, we finally went to a steak dinner. We ate at Logan’s Roadhouse, which I chose primarily because I knew it would feel different. Usually, Outback Steakhouse is my go-to for special occasions, and yet even though we go to Outback only once in a long while, I felt like going to Outback for my birthday would feel too much like the same old thing. So I chose Logan’s, which we had been to once in Orlando and remembered liking. It’s not as good as Outback, but it was fun and felt like we were doing something different and special. I had a steak and ribs combo and felt very satisfied. Then we headed to Best Buy and browsed. I ended up buying Pulp Fiction on Blu-ray, and Melanie sneakily purchased me the most recent album by The New Pornographers (which is probably my very favorite band to come out in the last 10 years or so). Melanie made the purchase while Peter, Eddie, and I played around in the musical instrument department. (Edison and Peter love going into the drum room and banging away on the skins.) Some might consider it a humble birthday, but seeing my little stack of gifts—a book, a movie, and a CD—I couldn’t help feeling like it was the perfect haul.

With the van problems having thrown a wrench into the original birthday plans, the birthday celebrations have continued sporadically since my actual birthday weekend. Just a few days ago, Melanie gave me a belated birthday gift of a new set of bath towels. They feel deliriously luxurious, like you’re wrapping yourself in a blanket after you step out of the shower. I love them, and it makes my birthday haul even more perfect—a book, a movie, a CD, and something practical and yet pampering. What a perfect blend! And then, this past Sunday, Melanie and the boys made me Mountain Dew Cupcakes. They’re quite lemony, and I don’t think you’d think of Mountain Dew at all if you weren’t told that they are Mountain Dew cupcakes, but they were yummy.

The Friday after my birthday, Melanie and I also went on a date to our first concert in years. Believe it or not, The New Pornographers actually came to Tallahassee. I guess you could view the concert as a continuation of my birthday celebrating, but I’ll save the details of the concert for another post. Until then, I’ll just say that things are going well. The van worked well for a couple of weeks, and then something else went wrong, but that’s been the story all along. I’m ready to drive it off a cliff. Happy birthday to me!

Jambalaya

2011-09-25T16:54:00.000-04:00

I’m now twice as far into the semester as I was the last time I wrote. Things are still going well. I actually had a student come by during my office hours just to tell me how much she enjoys the class. She stuck around for a few minutes just to chit-chat. It is her first semester in college, and she told me that she’s really happy because all of her professors have been awesome, including me. (For the record, I’m not actually a professor.) Admittedly, it was nice to get such positive feedback. Without even knowing it, she reassured me that many of my desires for the class are being met, at least in one student’s eyes. She said she likes how much class discussion we have, and she says the class feels like a very safe place to share your views, etc. I was thrilled to have the feedback, as bizarre as it felt to receive it. I’ve never had a student show up just to tell me that he/she likes my class. It’s a strange thing.

So, teaching is going well, but I’m sick—again. It’s beginning to feel like I should blog about my health only when I’m not sick. As always, it seems to be a matter of the illness circling around within the family and never really leaving. I was just getting over a cold when the semester began. Then everyone else in my family got it. In fact, many of them are still coughing regularly. They’ve all been to the doctor and hooked up with prescription meds. Eddie, Peter, and Creegan all had ear infections. They thought Melanie might have bronchitis. I haven’t been as bad off as everybody else, but it hardly matters. When you’re a parent, it sucks to have sick kids. You feel depressed on their behalf, and your rest is only as good as their rest. As for my own physical condition, I’m tired of feeling a massive amount of pressure in my head and of constantly needing to blow my nose. Thankfully, I think we’re all finally heading out of this one. Let’s hope for a good two or three weeks before anything else strikes, shall we?

Quick complaint: the weather. It’s late September. You go outside at night, when it’s dark, after 9pm, and you walk from your doorstep to your car. Guess what? You’re sweating like a pig. I’d like to tell Florida to shove it where the sun doesn’t shine, but the blasted sun is always shining here!

I’m no further along on my dissertation than I was two weeks ago. Pity. I don’t often feel inspired to work on it, although I occasionally get into conversations with others about it and get kind of excited. I get excited as I talk about it mostly because I feel more and more convinced that I’m right and that I have something to say. But, man, it’s a lot easier to have something to say than to actually say it. It’s the latter that overwhelms me. Philosophy is a picky, picky thing. You have to be so careful and precise. It makes it exhausting. Yes, yes, that’s what makes it so brilliant and beautiful when it succeeds, I know, but trust me, you can be a lot sloppier writing for almost any other field. Sometimes I fantasize about being a psychologist instead. Or even a high school teacher. Shhh, don’t tell!

On a positive note, this is looking like a great night for TV. I’m excited to see the premiers of The Amazing Race and Sister Wives. And yes, I’m going to watch Pan Am. Melanie and I have been watching a bit more TV this season, and it’s been fun. I’m already ready to bail on a few of the new shows we’ve tried, but it’s been nice to do something different.

And that’s my life.

School, Kids, the Yoozh

2011-09-08T17:55:00.001-04:00

I just got done with my second week of teaching. I’ve been wanting to write about it, of course, but it seems there is always something else to be done. As I reported before, I only have one TA to help me out, and the class has actually grown slightly since I griped about that. Fortunately, I quite like the TA I have; he actually entered the program at the same time that I did, so I’ve known him for a while. So far, he’s acted like he’s not too worried about handling the workload. He keeps a positive attitude, and I’m grateful.

Teaching ethics is quite different from teaching logic. It is better in some ways, not better in other ways. Clearly, having literally ten times the number of students makes the class feel less personal. And yet, ethics is something we can actually get into classroom discussions about. I’m not just teaching the students rules, I’m (hopefully) getting them to think critically about interesting things. That’s fun. But it’s also more work. It’s more up to me what I say and how I say it. I have to stimulate their interest, and because I’m not just teaching them rules, it’s not as laid out for me what I should be saying. The last couple of times that I’ve taught, I’ve worried that I’ll cover all the material in 30 minutes and have nothing to say for the remaining 45 minutes. That hasn’t happened, fortunately.

In other news, I can’t believe how “midlife” things feel now. That might not be the best description, but I don’t know what to say. “Established”? Eh, maybe. It’s hard to say that, though, when I’m still in school. But as a family, we’re very established, and it’s kind of mind-blowing. Eddie’s in Kindergarten. Can you believe it?!? And he and Peter had dentist appointments today, and going to something like that just feels so … I don’t know … parental, I guess! What’s more, Eddie is going to start gymnastics on Monday, and he and Peter both started taking an arts & crafts class at a community center on Wednesdays. Somehow, all this “extracurricular” stuff going on with my children just makes me feel all the more tipped over into adulthood. It’s crazy. And probably one reason I feel so desirous to be done with school and actually into a settled job (like I whined about last time). Not to leave Creegan out, he’s getting several teeth all at once. He’s growing up!

Well, there you have it. Another blasé peek into my life. I promise I often have more interesting thoughts and feelings than I ever get around to sharing on here. In the words of Brian May, “someday, one day.”

My Reality Check Just Bounced

2011-08-23T13:49:00.001-04:00

Being back in Tallahassee is a rude awakening on so many levels. Utah was wonderful. Really. More than ever, believe it or not. And more than ever, I’m aching to get back there and just settle in. I’m tired of aspiring for something wholly other. I’m sick of the journey, quite honestly. I want the destination at this point. And I’m happy to grow and develop in my own way once I’m at my destination, but I’m tired of life being all about getting somewhere else. Somehow, even before heading to Utah, my mind started opening up and it’s like I started seeing things more clearly and honestly than I have in a while. I’ve been wanting to blog about all my thoughts and feelings, but I feel like I don’t have time, and I know from experience that I’ll get lost as I try to articulate things and end up not saying half of the most important stuff I want to say. Bottom line: I just want to be comfortable and in my place. And right now, I’m not. Being in grad school is a means to an end. And I’m growing tired of it. The best analogy I can think of is when you spend all day long in the same room, and after hours upon hours, you just want to get out and have some new stimulation and take a deep breath of fresh air. I feel like that’s what I’m aching to do. And I’ve only recently become honest enough with myself to say, without assuming I’m somehow mistaken or an idiot or otherwise in the wrong, that my graduate program just isn’t that wonderful or rewarding. Yes, there are extremely smart people who teach here. But I don’t feel like I’ve been inspired or wowed as a student. I thought a Ph.D. program was meant to be incredibly exciting, to take you to new levels, and to groom you to be a professional. I, on the other hand, feel much like I could disappear and nobody would even realize it. I know I’m not the most proactive student in the world, but I thought part of the point of a Ph.D. program was that they took you under their wings and made sure you were ready for the next phase of your life. That’s not happening here. I quite literally think I’ve gotten little more out of this program than I would have gotten out of reading books and articles on my own. That just doesn’t seem right to me.

More immediately, I’m stressed and admittedly rather upset about how my fall semester is shaping up. I’m set to teach an ethics course that currently has 138 enrolled students. When I was a TA for a class that size, I was one of three TA’s. But, due to various constraints that I suppose ultimately tie back to the less-than-stellar economy, I’m being given one TA to help me out with this course. One. To make matters worse, this class is supposed to be “writing intensive” so as to satisfy certain university requirements. That means that I am required to require the students to write a certain amount over the course of the semester and to give them feedback on that writing. With only one TA, this seems virtually impossible. I’ve TA’d for this very same course a few times now, and at my busiest, I was responsible for grading 61 students. At that time, I felt like I was constantly grading. It was a lot to do. So, how in the world am I supposed to make my one TA grade all 138 students that are enrolled in my class? Short answer: I don’t think I really can! But where does that leave me? Do I try to grade half of them myself? That’s not going to work! I’m going to be plenty busy just preparing for the class and, heaven forbid, working on my dissertation. So what am I supposed to do? I figure that even if I spread the writing requirement out over 10 assignments, there will be 138 (rather short) essays to grade almost every single week. And that’s just impractical for one person to grade, or even for two people to grade when one of them also has to teach the course. Being in this situation is irksome. I feel like this is a rather common thing in life, for the requirements to be impossible to satisfy if one tries literally to do so in the proper way. It seems like most jobs tell you that you have to (a), (b), and (c), and yet those things in some sense contradict each other. For example, when I worked at a call center, I was told I couldn’t work any overtime without prior approval, and yet I was basically always required to stay longer than my actual shift (the requiring of which was not to be construed as permission to work overtime). I think that’s pretty much par for the course at most places, and yet it’s agitating. I think most people get away with things by bending the rules, but for those of us who want to follow the rules, it doesn’t work out. And then we look like the incompetent ones because, hey, why can’t we do it when everybody else can?

That’s my rant for today. It’s a shame I feel like ranting because I was actually feeling quite inspired while I was in Utah. My motivation has now been disemboweled by reality, but I guess I should try to muster up some enthusiasm, thinking of it as a ticket out of this place eventually. That was my game plan, and then I was told I’d get one TA. I’m finding it hard to recover from that.

My First Ever Airport Post

2011-08-08T17:30:00.002-04:00

I’m sitting here at Tallahassee Regional Airport. My flight was supposed to leave here 40 minutes ago. Now I’m told I won’t be leaving for at least another 90 minutes. I hope that’s the extent of the delay. I’ve been quite fortunate with air travel in the past. I’ve never run into serious delays or problems. The one problem I face now is that my current flight doesn’t leave Tallahassee until 11 minutes before my connecting flight departs Atlanta. Don’t think I’ll make that one. Supposedly I can make the 8:45pm flight from Atlanta to Salt Lake City, but that’s only if my flight isn’t delayed again. And who can say if that’s going to happen? Nobody, least of all the airline.

There are a few things that I’m grateful for at this moment. One, modern technology. Being stranded at an airport isn’t so horrible when you’ve got a laptop and a free wireless connection. I’ve been known to waste an hour or two online at home. Surely, I can do it here. Two, I’m grateful that I’m traveling alone today. As much as I love and miss my family, it would be horrible to be with them right now. Or at least, it would be extremely trying if I had three little kids with me, even if my wonderful wife were here too. Kids can’t handle just sitting around in airport for hours on end. So I’m glad they’re not. I pray we won’t be delayed when we fly out of Utah next week.

Oh crap, I’m tracking things online and I think there may be another delay. They haven’t announced it yet, but it’s not making sense that we can leave at the optimistic current projected time of 7:04pm, given that the airplane we are supposed to be on isn’t leaving Atlanta to come here until 7:14pm. What I hate about this situation is that you get a lot of runaround. They try to keep you calm by bumping the time up just a little bit at a time, but probably somebody somewhere has a sneaking suspicion that it’s really going to be delayed several more hours. They just don’t tell us that. Here’s the thing—I don’t want to fly to Atlanta tonight, just to spend the night in the Atlanta airport and not be able to continue on to SLC until tomorrow morning or something. I don’t even want them to put me up in a hotel in Atlanta. If that’s what’s going to happen, just let me go back to my apartment and start over from Tallahassee tomorrow. If they give me the constant runaround, in my situation at least, it might just drag things out for me unnecessarily.

Well, how about that. They just announced that they’re doing a “plane swap” in Atlanta, and that a plane should be on its way here from Atlanta shortly – and that we should therefore be able to leave here around 7pm, as previously announced. That sounds promising. I’m hopeful. But being hopeful has proven a really stupid thing to be, I’ve learned. At least for things like this. We’ll see. We’ll see.

Book Review: Bossypants

2011-08-06T09:04:00.002-04:00

Bossypants is consistently amusing and always interesting, but it is rarely hilarious and/or fascinating. The book is at its best when Fey gives readers a behind-the-scenes glimpse of Saturday Night Live or Chicago's famous improvisational troupe, The Second City, where Tina Fey honed her comedic chops before becoming a household name. Unfortunately, Fey's book focuses less on her ascension to the throne of televised comedy and instead favors the dispensing of modestly funny anecdotes that happened along the way, stories comprised of equal parts self-deprecation and self-congratulation. Even for fairly enthusiastic Tina Fey fans, this proves a bit disappointing. Still, despite being less illuminating than one might wish, Bossypants is a light and fun read, not unworthy of your time.

Excerpts from an Unpublished Manuscript, #2

2011-08-03T23:46:00.002-04:00

Once again, the motion was brought before the committee. The tension in the room was palpable. Seven times the motion had been presented, and seven times it had failed to pass. This despite the fact that, with the exception of one solitary holdout, the entire committee desired the proposed change. Unfortunately, the bylaws were such that any amendment to the charter’s constitution required a unanimous vote on the part of the council. Other regulations further restricted the council from voting on the same proposal more than once within a 30-day period, and so the committee’s frustration had been dragged out for the better part of a year. The monthly vote always ended in defeat, and yet the overwhelming majority always felt crushed, their hope proving most substantial whenever it was about to be dashed to pieces.

“And finally,” the chair of the committee spoke into the microphone, “we have proposal #31. I’m sure we’re all familiar with the proposal. If it’s fine with everybody else, I think I’ll pass on reading it for an eighth time. Any objections?”

Heads shook as grunts of approval rose into the air.

“Very well then,” the chair continued. “We shall now vote on proposal #31.” He held the official document describing proposal #31 high above his head. “All those in favor of proposal #31 say ‘aye.’”

“Aye,” came the enthusiastic response, a great many of the committee members nodding as they spoke and looking around in exaggerated seriousness, as if to dissuade any dissenters.

“And all those opposed to proposal #31, say ‘nay.’”

And surely enough, from the back corner, came the lone opposing vote. The rest of the committee sighed in recognition of their defeat, some of them groaning while others were too crestfallen to do even that. The chair of the committee stared down at the podium and began folding up the piece of paper he was holding. “Proposal #31 has been rejected, according to the bylaws of this charter’s constitution,” he mumbled into the microphone, his eyes never again lifting to meet his audience. “The committee may now be dismissed. The council will reassemble 30 days hence.”

As the council drifted from the room, the chair of the committee sank into a nearby chair. Somebody had to put an end to this. Something had to be done to allow proposal #31 to pass. But what? He had thought about this many times before, but it was clear that no legitimate means of adopting the proposal were available to the committee. Extreme measures had to be taken. After all, didn’t the committee members have an obligation to look out for each other? And didn’t he, as the chair of the committee, hold that obligation more solemnly than anyone else? Indeed, he did. And that’s when the chair of the committee made his decision. His mind had voted, and the vote was unanimous. He would bring an end to the proposal’s defeat. He would ensure that proposal #31 passed the next time it was brought before the council. And how would he do that? By disposing of the one committee member who relentlessly and unapologetically thwarted the rest of the committee’s plans, by getting rid of that one committee member who seemed physically incapable of voting anything other than ‘nay.’ And so it was settled. The chair of the committee would murder Hattie the Horse.

Book Review: Fun & Games

2011-07-31T16:10:00.002-04:00

Despite what we see in the movies, not every gunshot is explosive. If you’ve ever heard the sound of a 22 caliber handgun being fired, you know it sounds like little more than a crack or a pop. Duane Swierczynski’s Fun & Games is all action, but it pops a lot more than it explodes.

Charlie Hardie is an ex-cop of sorts. Nowadays, he is a professional housesitter for the rich and famous, his perennial gigs secured by Charlie’s penchant for professionalism and some good word-of-mouth advertising within celebrity circles. Charlie is content. He lives his life in the nicest of homes, and better yet, he is largely left alone. Things go a bit haywire on his latest job, however, when a scantily clad young woman barrels out of an in-house recording studio and attacks Charlie, accusing him of being one of “them.” Charlie is as baffled by the woman’s cryptic references to “them” as he is by her presence in the supposedly empty house. And yet, before long, the reality of “them” is made apparent to Charlie, who unwittingly finds himself a protector of more than a house—he is trying to save the life of the frantic woman who nearly skewered him with a microphone stand as well as himself.

It takes a very small sampling of Fun & Games to get a feel for Swiercyznki’s writing. The chapters begin with epitaphs quoting films such as Lethal Weapon and Commando. Suitcases are said to be “belched” and “vomited up” by airport baggage carousels, windy roads are compared to intestinal tracts, and some women are said to have “cheekbones that could cut tin cans.” There is a swagger to Swiercyznski’s words, even as they take on a very casual and laid-back, stream-of-consciousness feel. It is appropriate that the story is set in Hollywood and talks so much about the movies—you’ll feel like you’re reading a screenplay, a bit of razzle dazzle sprinkled over the otherwise simple and to-the-point verbiage.

One issue some readers may have with the book is pacing. The staccato narrative drives the story forward in rapid, sputtering bursts, bouncing back and forth between different characters’ perspectives in a borderline disorienting way. Rather than adding depth to the tale, this weighs down the story’s momentum. The first act tends to dilly-dally, with various characters marveling at how drawn out their respective chores have become—a feeling with which the reader qua reader may all too easily identify. Even so, the slow start eventually gives way to some genuinely engaging action sequences. Fun & Games may not go from 0-60 in under 10 seconds, but it does get there.

On the whole, there is nothing spectacular to be found in Fun & Games. It is so developmentally succinct that one finds it hard to become truly engrossed, the unrelenting action notwithstanding. But, as the title suggests, there is something in the way of sheer entertainment to be found here. One gets the feeling most adept writers could have produced something of this quality without breaking their imaginative backbones, and yet the book goes down fast and easy, like a cold drink of water. Take it on your next airplane trip, and it’ll help you pass the time. You may not think about it much afterward, but it won’t have bored you.

Tired

2011-07-25T16:36:00.005-04:00

I feel mentally and emotionally tired right now. Worn out a bit. I’m on campus, which means that I’ve been walking around outside in the heat, so that could be part of the problem. I’m sure it doesn’t help. But even aside from that, sometimes there are aspects of life that don’t seem very fulfilling and yet are very time-consuming and demanding and require a lot of effort. That sucks. I guess I should be grateful. Many people throughout history, and even throughout the world today, don’t have a choice about what life is like. Complaining that everything I do isn’t completely fulfilling and/or easy says something about the spoiled culture I’m a part of, I suppose. Even so, ‘tis my culture, so….

My students just don’t get a lot of what I’m trying to teach them. I’m not teaching an easy class, and it doesn’t help that it’s a condensed summer semester. But really, is it that incomprehensible? Is it me? Do I not know how to convey information in an understandable way? Or are they just dense? Really, I think some of it is that they don’t really put forth an effort to practice and/or read outside of class time. The point is, no matter what the excuse is, it’s a bit irritating and frustrating.

I was talking to a student after class about academic life. He asked about what I’m studying. I told him about the first draft of my dissertation prospectus and how the head of my dissertation committee said that I probably have way too much planned. My proposal outlined a five-chapter project, but I was told that my second chapter alone is probably enough for an entire dissertation. But the problem with philosophy is, anything could be a dissertation! Everything can be discussed and debated down to the tiniest little detail. It's exhausting, in a way. And a bit tedious. I feel like it’s all too common to have an idea in mind and have it in some sense squelched. Some of that goes with the territory—you may think you have an ingenuous idea, but if there’s a big gaping hole in your theory, then sorry, the theory fails. That can be disappointing. But it’s more than that. I feel like people always want you to narrow in or branch out from what you’re interested in. To offer an analogy, I feel like I had an idea for some portrait that I wanted to paint. I told my benefactor about it, and the benefactor says, “But, Ben, there’s enough detail in a single nostril that, really, you could and should just do a painting of a nostril.” Well, I wasn’t excited about getting into all the fine details of a nostril! I wanted to paint a face! And I liked the face I wanted to paint!

Anyway, that’s sort of how it goes. And that’s where my mind is at right now. I think I’m just tired. I actually got the feedback on my dissertation prospectus a week or two ago, and I haven’t felt down in the dumps about it. I sound like it now, but it’s just my mood. Still, I do feel like this accurately describes the way things go. And it’s not fun.

Bachelorhood Redux

2011-07-24T13:42:00.002-04:00

My wife and kids have left me. They’re in Utah, I’m not. The apartment is empty of people, save for myself. It’s strange, but so far not as horrible as I’d expected. I feel less lonely than I’d anticipated. Of course, Melanie and the kids have only been gone for a few days now. We’ll see how I feel in a couple of weeks. But for now, I’m handling it well.

It’s strange, but one side effect of being alone is that, in some respects, I feel less motivated to work. I’m distracted by being alone. Perhaps it’s the same thing that makes it hard for me to work at my office at school. When there’s nothing to do but work, I don’t want to work. Even so, I have been working. Like I said, there’s not much else to do. I’ve already prepared some of this upcoming Thursday’s lecture, for crying out loud.

I’m trying to have fun, to look at the bright side of my situation. Every time I eat, I turn on Netflix Instant Viewing and watch something. Why not? For some reason, I’m drawn to all these crappy movies. Rather than watching something recent that looks pretty good, I feel compelled to watch all these movies I remember wanting to see as a kid but that I never did see. Of course, they’re terrible. And I suspect as much when I push play, but they still win out over something better-looking. I can now say that I’ve seen both Howard the Duck and The Garbage Pail Kids Movie. Crappy, yes, but the latter actually had some decent acting in it. Seriously.

You know, another funny side effect of Melanie being gone is that I’m easily distracted even from relaxing and having fun. Just as I feel less motivated to work, I feel less motivated to play. It’s hard for me to sit here and watch a movie by myself, even though I’d have no problem doing it if Melanie were with me. But by myself, my mind starts to wander. I start thinking I should work. I usually give in to temptation and pull out the laptop and try to work and watch the movie at the same time. At that point, I’m usually a better worker than movie-watcher, believe it or not. I end up only kind of seeing the movie. But because there’s no reason not to work in front of the TV, I keep the movies going. From Friday through Saturday, I watched (or at least sort of watched) a total of five movies. In addition to the two mentioned above, I saw Terminator Salvation (decent, for what it is), Splice (pretty good), and Airplane II (which I’d seen as a kid, but not for many years – I’ll blaspheme and say that I think it’s a worthy sequel).

In addition to movie-watching, I did entertain myself by taking a trip to Wal-Mart. I think I’d make a much better bachelor now than I did back when I really was a bachelor. I’d be more responsible. I stocked up on some fun bachelor food, but in a more health-informed way. I grabbed a pre-made pizza crust, but it’s wheat. I plan to load it up with turkey pepperoni, red peppers, black olives, and of course, sauce and cheese. It’ll be dinner tonight. I also got some fun sandwich-makings for lunch – roast beef from the deli, honey smoked turkey, and ham, stackable pickles, reduced fat provolone (at a boy!), and some good hoagie rolls. I tried to get whole grain hoagie rolls, but nothing was quite right. I had to splurge and go with squishy white rolls. They should be yummy. To accompany these sandwiches, I have a bag of fat-free potato chips (they’re not bad!) and some cold bottles of Stewart’s Diet Orange ’n Cream Soda. Oh yeah.

Speaking of which, I’m going to go eat one of these sandwiches and down one of those sodas (and eat some of those chips) right now. I’m also going to put a movie on. Visitors are welcome, but please call first. I might be naked. Why not?

The Calm Amidst the Storm

2011-07-15T12:21:00.003-04:00

As the noon hour smothers Tallahassee in a thick and wooly blanket of gray cloud that drenches the city as though a giant had just pulled a wet garment from a wash basin and held it over our collective heads, I can’t help but feel calm and relaxed. My ease, I’m sure, is accentuated by the fact that over the last few days, I’ve felt the tiniest hints of dread and depression seeping their way into my life via some cracks that recently appeared. Not that many months ago, life felt bleak and despairing. Physical ailments were all too common in my family, and our newly acquired van was proving nothing but a troublemaking rapscallion of a vehicle. At that time, I felt more hopeless and helpless than I could remember ever feeling as an adult. The last few months, in contrast, have been blissful. The wife and kids have, overall, been healthy, and even the less-than-perfect van has failed to give us any serious trouble.

But all that changed a few days ago. Eddie got a fever, which wouldn’t be so troubling if he hadn’t started talking a lot about his surgery. Why would he bring that up? Is he feeling something? He then started complaining about his side hurting, but only occasionally. He even started walking all hunched over, just as he did after his surgery. He claimed he didn’t feel pain and was just walking that way because he was worried that his side would hurt otherwise – but I wasn’t sure whether to believe him. Was he feeling pain but scared that he would have to have another surgery if he admitted as much? And then, yesterday, my wife drops me off at school and heads toward the store, where she plans to do some shopping and then return to pick me up after class. Instead, I get a text message during the class I teach, informing me that the van started smoking and Melanie has parked just a few blocks from the school. Melanie later told me that the van was smoking so much that she couldn’t really see out of the windows, even though the temperature gauge inside the dashboard looked normal. I ended up having to accept the gracious offer of one of my students, who was staying after class to ask me some questions about the class material, but who offered instead to drive me to a gas station to pick up some coolant and then drive me to my abandoned van. (Melanie had taken the kids to the library, which quite fortunately, was just around the corner.) With Edison and the van both breaking down, I felt like I had been thrown back in time eight months. And I didn’t like that at all.

I’m happy to report that the van is now at the mechanic (its second home), and I’ve calmed down enough to recognize that whatever’s wrong is probably not going to be a huge deal. I assumed the van was leaking coolant, because I had filled it with coolant about a week before it started smoking, and yet the coolant was basically gone when I went to rescue the vehicle. The coolant enabled us to make it home without too much trouble, but by the time we were getting to our apartment, it was smoking a bit again. Still, the mechanic, whom I know personally and trust, validated my assumption that the coolant was leaking. Should be fixed within a few hours, whatever that might require. (A new radiator at worst, but still fixable within the day.) Meanwhile, Edison has been acting totally normal – by which I mean healthy, since it’s hard to tell anymore what’s normal.

So, at this very moment, I am at peace. I have recognized a lot of blessings over the last few days, amidst all of this. And when all is said and done, the most important things in my life are safe and well. That’s what matters.

I Exist

2011-07-05T21:00:00.001-04:00

So, today marked the first day of my second week of teaching. Things are going well, I think. I have fewer than 20 students. It’s not intimidating. I’m teaching logic, so the material is very straightforward. We’re not doing philosophy in the strictest sense (or perhaps we are doing it in the most strict sense), so there’s not a lot of arguing to be done. There aren’t interesting classroom discussions. That makes it easier in some ways. I’m enjoying myself well enough.

If I had tons and tons of available time, I’d write about how I received some belated Father’s Day gifts from Melanie and the boys (a trio of great movies on Blu-ray), about Edison’s birthday, and about the fourth of July (which was quite pleasant, all said and done). But I don’t have time, dang it all.

I guess this is nothing more than a declaration of existence. But hey, that’s needed sometimes.

Movie Review: Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?

2011-06-23T16:42:00.000-04:00

Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?
(PG-13)
Directed by Morgan Spurlock
Running Time: 90 minutes
Originally Released: January 21, 2008 (Sundance Film Festival)

* * ½ (out of four)

It is both a compliment and a complaint that Morgan Spurlock’s 2008 documentary, Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?, remains as watchable as it does, even after the infamous leader of the al-Qaeda terrorist organization has been found and killed. It is a compliment in that Spurlock’s film examines just enough about America’s relationship with the Middle East, both from a cultural and from a governmental standpoint, to be of interest to those who are not already well-versed in politics. It is a complaint in that Spurlock’s film scarcely deals with what it repeatedly heralds as its main objective, the now-moot point of discovering Bin Laden’s whereabouts.

As the film begins, documentarian Spurlock (best known for his 2004 hit Super Size Me) has just found out that he and his wife are expecting their first child. This inspires Spurlock to reflect on the safety of the world into which he is bringing a child, and these ruminations prompt Spurlock to do his part as a father by setting off to the Middle East in search of Bin Laden, who at the time the film was made, had managed to evade the U.S. military for several years. Spurlock undergoes an extreme brand of self-defense training and takes to the Middle East, conducting mostly man-on-the-street-style interviews with the common folk of Morocco, Pakistan, Israel, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, and more. Amidst the causal speculation concerning Bin Laden’s location, Spurlock’s interviewees share their thoughts on the United States, on the values of Islam, on Al-Qaeda, and on the inhabitants of their neighboring countries, all for better or for worse. What emerges is a kind of humanistic homogeny residing in the hearts of non-extremists, whom Spurlock happily proclaims outnumber “the crazies” and so should put our minds at ease, expectant parent or no.

Despite the transcontinental travels involved in the film’s production, Spurlock’s documentary does a lot of gearing up without really going anywhere. Though viewers are quickly taken in by Spurlock’s undeniable charm, he meanders as a documentarian. Is this a film about what it would take for the American everyman to live in the war-ravished countries of the Middle East? Is it a film about the Middle East’s misconception of America (and, presumably, about our misconception of the Middle East)? Is it a film about the common thread that exists among all groups of people, even those who have been taught to vehemently oppose one another? Is it a film about the unrelenting skirmishes between Palestine and Israel? And oh yeah, is it a film about trying to find Bin Laden??? To some degree or another, Spurlock’s documentary is all of these things. And that is the problem. No single topic is given enough attention to payoff. Had Spurlock focused his attention on any one of these issues, his film would have been all the better for it. Instead, Spurlock has succeeded first and foremost in teasing us with the prospects of half a dozen or so great documentaries, none of which he has brought to fruition. It may be a bit ironic, then, that what this film has going for it above all else is Spurlock himself—not as a filmmaker, but as a highly-likeable average Joe. A self-proclaimed redneck, Spurlock warms up the audience as readily as he does the majority of Middle Easterners with whom he interacts. Spurlock’s charm certainly makes the film watchable. But it doesn’t make it particularly good.

Movie Review: Teen Wolf Too

2011-06-21T14:45:00.001-04:00

Teen Wolf Too
(PG)
Directed by Christopher Leitch
Running Time: 95 minutes
Originally Released: November 20, 1987

Zero (out of four)

I was a little kid when the original Teen Wolf was released in 1985. Being only a lad, I thought the movie was great, and I remember watching the cartoon spin-off of the film when it debuted on Saturday mornings the following year. When Teen Wolf Too was released in theaters in the fall of 1987, I very much wanted to see it. Almost 24 years later, thanks to Netflix Instant Viewing, I have finally seen what I’ve been missing out on for nearly a quarter of a century—total and complete crap.

Teen Wolf Too, as its oh-so-clever title suggests, is not about the teenage werewolf of the first film, Scott Howard (who was played by Michael J. Fox), but about a second teenage werewolf—Scott’s cousin, Todd. Todd (played by a young and pretty Jason Bateman) knows all about his cousin’s lycanthropic tendencies, but so far he thinks himself immune to the family curse. Thanks in part to cousin Scott’s notoriety, Todd has just entered his freshman year of college on a sports scholarship. Never mind that Todd is far from being an athlete. The powers that be are hoping he can nevertheless capitalize on his family genes and, with a little coaxing, lead the school to some ferocious boxing victories. Todd is less certain, but surely enough, as Todd takes his first beating in the ring, his frustration unleashes the animal within and he soon transforms into a werewolf. The furrier version of Todd quickly knocks out his opponent and, like Scott in the first film, becomes an instant sensation. His ego inflates accordingly, and Todd soon forgets his veterinary ambitions and who his real friends are. You know the drill.

I’m not aiming to do a historical research paper here, but it seems fairly evident that Teen Wolf Too was pushed through to production simply to capitalize on the success of its predecessor. That happens often enough, but what makes this film particularly terrible is that it feels as if it were scripted—and that might be a generous word, in this case—not by a professional screenwriter but by a board of executives who knew nothing more than that Teen Wolf was a smash hit. There is next to no development here whatsoever. Todd goes from being the nice boy next door to a self-centered jerk and (spoiler alert!) back again with all the subtlety of a paddle ball being batted around by a six-year-old who’s just eaten one too many Smarties. But how could there be any genuine character or story development when half of the film consists of musical montage? Two of the full-song-length montages even occur back to back. I can only hope the original theatrical version of the film included an onscreen notice to the audience that it was now safe to head to the restroom and visit the concession stand. (Probably not, for fear they would never return.) In the end, I’m unsure if the filmmakers thought viewers would be so stricken with wolf fever that simply watching a werewolf in sunglasses cruising around in a Ferrari for seven minutes at a time would be rewarding enough, or if they simply didn’t care what audiences would think, presuming that movie-goers would line up at the box office either way. I’m guessing the latter.

Movie Review: Just Go With It

2011-06-20T09:03:00.003-04:00

Just Go With It
(PG-13)
Directed by Dennis Dugan
Running Time: 117 minutes
Originally Released: February 11, 2011

* ½ (out of four)

The first rule of improvisation, pre-teen aspiring actress Maggie informs us, is never to shoot down an idea. Always accept another’s suggestion. Run with it. Make the most out of it. That’s the key to success. As Maggie spews this wisdom onscreen, it’s hard not to interpret her remarks as a veiled and subtle plea from the filmmakers to the audience itself, asking viewers to make the most out of whatever they are given, no matter how lousy, uninspired, or preposterous it may be. Indeed, Just Go With It is clearly hoping audiences will follow the advice found in the film’s title. Surely enough, only the most gracious and forgiving viewers will enjoy the few laughs that Just Go With It can provide.

Just Go With It is a romantic comedy starring Adam Sandler, Jennifer Aniston, and new to the silver screen, Brooklyn Decker and her breasts. Sandler plays Danny Maccabee, a 40-something plastic surgeon who lures college-aged girls to his bed by playing the sensitive victim in a fabricated marriage gone sour. Aniston plays Katherine, Danny’s nurse, who knows her employer’s schemes and derides him for them, but only in a friendly and none-too-serious way. Danny’s ruse has proven quit successful over the years, but problems arise after the surgeon meets and fairly immediately sleeps with Palmer (played by Decker and her breasts), the 23-year-old blonde bombshell with whom he feels a genuine connection. Coincidentally, Danny didn’t pretend to be married with Palmer, and yet she happens upon his prop wedding ring—the lone relic of a broken-off engagement years earlier—and won’t accept that he’s single. Not wanting to miss out on the chance to develop things with Palmer, Danny enlists Katherine to pretend to be his wife and prove to Palmer that she and he are on the brink of divorce. Katherine’s two children, Maggie (Bailee Madison) and Michael (Griffin Gluck), unwittingly enter the picture, as does Danny’s goofy friend Eddie (Nick Swardson), who acts as Katherine’s extramarital love interest. The rest, as they say, is clichéd history.

Just Go With It treads so much familiar territory that it’s hard to say anything novel about it, even in criticism. Thankfully, a rather fitting analogy can be found in the movie’s soundtrack, which is comprised almost entirely of “mash-ups.” For those who don’t know, a “mash-up” is where various parts of several extant songs are blended together, resulting in a new mix of old material, something akin to a musical collage. Creatively speaking, Just Go With It is about the same—there is nothing new here, but the jokes and plot lines have been shuffled up enough to become, technically, a new film. If that weren’t intellectually insulting enough, the film should also offend those viewers who have grown tired (as I have) of stereotypical gender roles. Is it really funny to see men drooling over a woman in a bikini when it’s been done infinitely many times over the last 40 years of filmmaking? Are we really supposed to be charmed by Danny, who’s not even painted as much of a villain but should probably have countless STDs at this point? These things offend me much more than, say, the explicit sex of Blue Valentine. But that’s me. I feel especially disappointed with Aniston, whom I believe should be ashamed of her participation here—not because she’s starring in a frivolous rom-com, but because she’s starred in something that is degrading of her as an artist. Sandler can do better, but at least we’re familiar with his penchant for vulgarity and stupidity. Decker and her breasts are probably quite at home here, but so much for having a woman’s supposed attractiveness amount to anything more than her cup size and the amount of skin she is willing to keep bared at all times.

Father's Day 2011

2011-06-19T18:12:00.002-04:00

It’s been a good Father’s Day. I slept in a bit later than I probably should have. I ate a responsible bowl of Wheat Chex, but topped it off with a Svenhard’s cinnamon roll. We went to church and I remained surprisingly positive through it all, even when kids were getting a bit out of control. I came home and let my wife pour me a tall glass of Diet Mountain Dew. We baked a margherita pizza (yum!) from Costco for lunch, and we ate it while streaming Teen Wolf Too on Netflix. (A horrible movie, but more or less family friendly. I hadn’t ever seen it before and wrongfully thought at least one or two of us would enjoy it.) I started a new book that I’m reading just for fun and not for any academic purpose, which can be rare nowadays. And now we’ve just gone on a drive where Melanie and I actually got to talk for more than a few minutes without interruption. Quite a lovely day, I’d say.

To celebrate Father’s Day, I’d like to take a brief moment to appreciate publicly each of my children.

Edison

Edison is such a big kid nowadays. I’m loving it, especially his creativity, which has changed a lot over the last little while. He still doesn’t quite get jokes. About a month ago, I read him some jokes out of a kids’ magazine. He picked up on the general overall tone of them, but puns are still beyond his ability fully to appreciate. As such, I found myself in hysterics when Edison recently performed a bit of stand-up comedy for Melanie and me. He really did, too. On our way out of church a few weeks ago, we stopped by the primary room, which everyone had left, and Edison stood at the podium and talked into the microphone, telling us jokes. Here’s a bit of his routine:

What do doors like to eat for breakfast? (Pause.) Pianos.
What do chairs like to eat for breakfast? (Pause.) Doors.

I couldn’t stop laughing.

Edison also fancies himself a photographer. A couple of months ago, he took this disturbing photo of a firefighter who bravely gave his life in the line of duty:

And finally, I was really impressed by this drawing that Edison made for me today. The red people are he and I. The thick red blur going out of my (the person on the left’s) head is to show that I’m thinking about Eddie and me going on a rocket into outer space. You can see the sun (obvious enough) and Mars and Neptune (on the left side of the page, in brown and pink, respectively). The blue above the red line is of the rocket blasting into space. I was sincerely impressed that he would draw me as thinking about these things and capture that in a visual way. Pretty cool.

Peter

Peter is barely into being three years old, which I learned with Edison is a much more difficult age than two. Fortunately, there have been a lot of sweet times between Peter and me lately. It wasn’t long ago that I was feeling bad about my relationship with Peter, feeling like he just wasn’t very playful with me. But recently, this has improved a ton and we seem to play around together a lot. It’s been really wonderful for me. We even have our own special little game, where we talk gibberish nonsense to each other, sometimes rather extensively. And I love that Peter is always quick with a drawn-out “I love you, toooo” whenever I say “I love you” to him.

Creegan

Creegan and I have gotten a lot closer lately, even though we’ve always felt close. I love tickling his belly with my face or head, which he always laughs a lot at. Recently, I’ve done a lot more putting him to sleep at night, too. He can be fussy, but miraculously he’s been content to let me pat his back and bounce around with him while he falls asleep on my shoulder. Most of the time, he just wants his mom, so it’s nice that I’ve been able to do this with him. And the other day, we spent a little bit of time playing with toys together—or at least he quite contentedly watched me play with toys in front of him. It was some nice one-on-one time, and it happened right after we danced around together to some really great music. It’s fun having him around.

To finish this post off, I’ll share this video, which Melanie made of Edison and Peter just a few hours ago. Peter gets a little behind, but he catches up at the end.

Movie Review: Zombieland

2011-06-15T11:02:00.000-04:00

Zombieland
(R)
Directed by Ruben Fleischer
Running Time: 88 minutes
Originally Released: October 2, 2009

*** ½ (out of four)

Sometimes the only thing more dangerous than a zombie with a craving for brains is Woody Harrelson with a craving for Hostess Twinkies. If the two were to get into a fight, who would win? Zombieland seeks to answer this question and few others of little to no import. It is a movie as decadent and indulgent as a Twinkie itself. Nobody’s claiming it’ll do you any good—but that doesn’t mean it won’t give you the cinematic equivalent of a sugar rush.

Harrelson is just one of the four central figures—sans zombies—at the heart of Zombieland. Joining him is Jessie Eisenberg as the film’s narrator, an intelligent but borderline geek who strictly adheres to the dozens of rules for survival he’s compiled since zombies have all but destroyed the human race. Heading to Columbus, Ohio to check on his parents, Eisenberg’s character (known only as Columbus, because of his chosen destination) runs into Harrelson’s character (dubbed Tallahassee), and the two subsequently run into a pair of con-women, Wichita (played by Emma Stone) and her 12-year-old sister Little Rock (Abigail Breslin). The foursome then travel across the country, fighting off the living dead as they go along.

Zombieland is a love it or hate it movie. If it appeals to you at all, you are bound to think it’s absolutely great. It’s a hyper-stylized, unabashedly gratuitous action/horror flick with a constant dose of dark humor strewn throughout, not to mention cadavers, blood, and guts. The humor is what you’d expect from a film like this, but it works. Case in point, when Columbus has his first run-in with a zombie, he finds himself trapped in a bathroom and fighting off the zombie by bashing it in the head with the only things within reach—a bag of cotton balls and a roll of toilet paper. Special mention should be made of an extended cameo from a comedy legend at the film’s midpoint. I won’t give it away, but I’m tempted to use the phrase “a real hoot” for perhaps the first time in my life. Yes, the film has its laugh-out-loud moments, plenty of smirk-worthy scenes, and enough action to keep you frivolously entertained. It’s nothing brilliant, but it is a mighty tasty cinematic snack cake.

The Path

2011-05-31T16:43:00.002-04:00

In February, I wrote that I was going to start walking regularly as a form of exercise. I didn’t end up being the most diligent about it, and sometimes I would go several days in a row without going on walks for the purpose of exercising. Over the last couple of weeks, however, I’ve been quite diligent about it again. Maybe just maybe it has something to do with Melanie’s recent discovery of a walking / jogging / running / biking / what-have-you trail located almost right behind where we live. It’s funny that it took us so long to discover it, especially when we drive by the entrance to it quite regularly. But as far as walking goes, it’s not in the direction that I had normally been walking, so I never stumbled upon it myself. Melanie was a bit more explorative in her walking, so she found it. And it’s lovely.

I’ll share some pictures momentarily, but I’ll say that the first thing I love about the trail is just how shady it is. The trail runs through lots of trees, so it’s peaceful and serene, quite unlike the roadside sidewalk I was accustomed to walking on. And of course it’s much cooler, since the trees do a decent job of blocking out the sunlight, especially if you go early in the morning. It’s a whole different experience, and I’m loving it. The only downside is that, despite the trail’s being right behind where we live, you have to go a semi-roundabout way to get to it. So, if you walk for 30 minutes, most of that time is not on the trail itself. And, when you return, you have to go up a somewhat steep hill. This is the case no matter where you walk, but when I use this path, the steep part of my walk comes nearer to the end and is steeper than what I had dealt with before (simply because the steepness isn’t so spread out). That makes for a slightly grueling end to the walk, especially in this humidity. (Also, it’s already been in the mid- and upper-90s here for a couple of weeks. Mornings are better, but not nearly as cool as you’d hope.)

I decided to take our camera with me on my walk one morning, and of course it ended up being a grayer morning than usual. A lot of the photos I took turned out fairly blurry. Oh well. I’ll share what I can, and hopefully you’ll get an idea of the beauty that I enjoy. I’ve said it before, but if you didn’t feel the heat and humidity in the air, you could look around certain parts of Tallahassee and fool yourself into believing you’re in Washington state. That is something I’m grateful for almost every single day.

And now, the photos:

Walking downhill toward the path, which is in the cluster of trees just beyond the white building. You can see that there are lots of trees. I’m happy to live somewhere that looks like this.

In the spring, many trees here sprout what look like pink flowers. From a distance, the “petals” look like normal, broad, flat petals, but …

… up close, you realize that the “petals” are thin and grassy. I don’t know what these things are. When it rains, they get all over your car, all wet and balled up like Mother Nature hacked a hairball. But I think they’re pretty.

The path begins.

The path continues. Notice the pink flowers in the trees on both the left and the right. (You have to squint to see them, or just click on the pic and make it larger.)

This is a long-distance photo of two rabbits further ahead on the trail. I saw another rabbit later on, and I’ve encountered them on this trail before.

Wet and green – my idea of perfection. (I think Miss Piggy once said that about Kermit the Frog.)

The end of the trail, or the beginning of the return.

I saved this picture for last because when I saw these flowers, I was absolutely blown away. They look like something out of a science fiction movie, like little exploding stars. I wonder if they are hallucinogenic if you eat them. All hallucinogenic plants should look like this, don’t you think?

Thanks for walking with me! Now go home!

Movie Review: Ricky

2011-05-26T10:41:00.003-04:00

Ricky
(NR)
Directed by François Ozon
Running Time: 90 minutes
Originally Released: February 6, 2009 (Berlin International Film Festival)

* * (out of four)

Newborn babies are such sweet little angels, aren’t they? Take Ricky, for instance. Ricky is the cherub-like offspring of Katie (Alexandra Lamy), a French factory worker, and Paco (Sergi López), the Spanish man who woos Katie and soon moves in with her and her seven-year-old daughter, Lisa (Mélusine Mayance). Ricky’s arrival puts a mild strain on Katie and Paco’s relationship, but things escalate when bruises mysteriously appear on Ricky’s back and Katie suspects Paco of abusing their son. Paco is innocent, but nobody knows this until an offended Paco has moved out and disappeared. Only then is the true source of Ricky’s bruises discovered: Ricky is sprouting wings.

If you just cocked an eyebrow and muttered a “Say what now?” under your breath, you are probably feeling what I felt prior to watching this film. Unfortunately, you are also feeling what I feel now that I’ve watched the film in its entirety. The premise of the French film Ricky is admittedly intriguing, but the film is even more directionless than the title character, a newborn who flits about in supermarkets when Mommy (rather recklessly, I would argue) leaves him unattended so she can fetch some groceries. I am under the strong impression that writer and director François Ozon came up with a charming but admittedly barebones premise for a movie—what if someone gave birth to a baby that sprouted wings?—and, without knowing what else to do with it, threw together a script and let it fly. Consequently, the tone and pacing of Ricky are all wrong, and the film never feels grounded. My wife summed it up perfectly: “They are taking this idea way too seriously, and yet not seriously enough.”

The gracious part of me wants to view the film as some kind of allegory, but I can’t bring myself sincerely to believe it was meant as such. I tried. I even think there are some obvious interpretations you can consider, especially in light of the film’s final few scenes. But as easy as it is to fabricate an intended message for the film, I just don’t buy it. I don’t think the message was really there. As such, the film leaves one feeling strangely unsettled and unsatisfied with the product as a whole. I’ll grant that Ricky has a lot going for it in terms of teasing one’s curiosity. Woefully, watching the film won’t satisfy one’s wonder.

Movie Review: Blue Valentine

2011-05-12T12:10:00.001-04:00

Blue Valentine
(R)
Directed by Derek Cianfrance
Running Time: 112 minutes
Originally Released: January 24, 2010 (Sundance Film Festival)

* * * * (out of four)

In general, I don’t like movies that wallow in the bleak aspects of life, as though nothing good exists or really comes out of anything. I’m not talking about movies with a sad or tragic ending, but movies that are almost pervasively negative and depressing, from start to finish. Critics tend to laud these films, but the praise and the movies alike strike me as pseudo-intellectual, pseudo-artistic fodder, at least most of the time. I make these preliminary remarks because Blue Valentine could easily be lumped into the same general category as these other films; it is a depressing, slow-moving tale that leaves a somberness hanging in the air once the end credits begin to roll. All that being said, there is something beautiful about it. It is an excellent film.

Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams star as Dean and Cindy Pereira, respectively. Cindy is a nurse, Dean a painter. Frankie is their daughter, four years old or so, and the apple of Dean’s eye. But there is a disconnect in the home. Cindy thinks Dean is too childish and has squandered his potential. Dean just wants his family to be happy and to love him, to think of their life as perfect—or at least good enough—and yet not at the expense of his having to change. He has a kind of “just do it” attitude about being content with their life. He’s the kind of person that wants to overlook the negative, to pretend things are fine, even when they’re clearly not. As such, he doesn’t meet Cindy’s needs, and she doesn’t meet his. Both parties want life to be what they want it to be, and it’s just not. Dean pretends, Cindy endures.

Blue Valentine is all about juxtaposition. The film toggles back and forth between the beginning of Dean and Cindy’s romance—never perfect, but at least naively hopeful at one point—and the steady disintegration of that relationship. The subtlety with which this metamorphosis is examined is what makes the film so remarkably good. The contrast between Dean and Cindy’s early and late relationship is not entirely stark; their relationship is not painted as a blissful romance that turns horribly sour. Instead, the sweet and the sour are both always there, to some degree or another. These are two frail and fragile characters who cling to each other and find that, over time, their affections have curdled. Maybe they should have known better. Maybe they never should have developed their relationship as much as they did. These are obvious points to ponder, ones the characters undoubtedly confront and ones the audience can’t help but consider.

Again, it is the genuineness with which every interchange and scene unfolds that makes Blue Valentine such an accomplishment. Gosling and Williams are both phenomenal. Williams received a well-deserved Oscar nomination for her performance, and both Gosling and Williams received Golden Globe nominations. Gosling has quickly become one of my favorite actors, but Williams may very well outshine him here. Both actors are unbelievably good at being believable. There isn’t the slightest hint in either performance that this is not who these people are, that you are not simply watching a real-life couple in their best and worst moments. I don’t know how much of the dialogue was ad-libbed, but I think the script by Cami Delavigne, Joey Curtis, and director Derek Cianfrance deserves special mention. The film doesn’t sound written, and that’s precisely why it succeeds in the manner that it does. When Dean is jealous of Cindy’s run-in with an ex-boyfriend, he talks as a jealous person would talk rather than saying jealous-sounding things. There is a difference, and it takes good writing to tease out the difference.

Blue Valentine is an emotionally brutal film, but its brutality stems more from the veracity of its presentation than from its explicitness. This is true of the arguing that takes place between Dean and Cindy, for instance, but it’s also true of the film’s notorious sexuality. I don’t think that a film is sexually graphic only if it shows certain body parts, but I admit I’m surprised that the film was originally given an NC-17 rating (a rating that was later repealed). There are a few sex scenes, but it doesn’t get as explicit as you’d think. I suspect that it is the non-stylized manner in which the sex is depicted that makes it seem more explicit. It seems too real, perhaps, even though it doesn’t reveal nearly as much as you’d find in other films. Is cinematic sex really less offensive or graphic if it’s not accompanied with music and presented as a montage of close-up, writhing body parts? I don’t know. Apparently some will feel that way. Such people have further reason to steer clear of Blue Valentine, if they wish to remain fully comfortable with what’s depicted onscreen. Besides that, the sadness of the film should be enough to give sensitive viewers pause. If you can’t handle melancholia, you probably shouldn’t be watching this movie. Just know that you’ll be missing out on a tremendously well-done film.

Now What?

2011-05-11T16:04:00.001-04:00

Another academic year has passed. Three down, one more to go—sort of. As in, not really. It’s pretty much official at this point that I’ll be sticking around at FSU beyond the spring 2012 semester. I’ve probably told this story before, but when I entered my MA program, they told us that even if we have a master’s degree in philosophy, we should plan on taking 5—7 years to complete a PhD. With that in mind, I was a bit worried when my current program offered me only four years of guaranteed funding. Four years didn’t sound very long. And now three of those years are up. I only have one year left. That may sound like a lot of time, now that I’m “all but dissertation” (or ABD), meaning the only thing I really have left to do is write a dissertation. But there’s more to it than that. First off, I’ll be teaching in the latter part of the summer and in the fall. That will be very time consuming. On top of that, if I were planning to graduate next May, I would have to start applying for teaching positions this October. Could I do that? In principle, yes. But it would be rather pointless. The cold hard fact is, in this economic climate, as a philosopher especially, job opportunities will be slim and the competition brutal. If you’re someone like me, who won’t have a substantial portion of your dissertation written by October, and who has never had something published in a journal, you simply aren’t going to be marketable. It would be embarrassing even to apply for jobs under those conditions. It would, I believe, make you look like an idiot for even trying.

Within the last couple of weeks, I’ve discussed these concerns with a couple of relevant people from my department. I’ve been told that continued funding of some kind is almost guaranteed for someone like me. It’s quite common for someone like myself, who comes in with a master’s. Wrapping up in four years is just plain difficult. So, in all likelihood, I would be given half the funding that I normally get to stick around for an extra fall semester. If a miracle occurs and there is more money available, I’d even receive normal funding for that semester, but that’s not incredibly likely. But at least I’d be getting something. That would extend my time as a doctoral student at FSU to December 2012. I’d apply for jobs in October 2012, and I’d hopefully spend the spring semester of 2013 interviewing with numerous schools that are all highly enamored of me. And how are my bills getting paid during the spring 2013 semester? If all goes well, I’d be given an adjunct teaching gig at FSU for that semester, a kind of gratuity on their part to sustain me fiscally as I try to secure a job for the following year. Apparently, that’s a pretty typical arrangement. So, even though none of this is absolutely guaranteed—what is?—this is what I’m now planning on and expecting. Knock on wood.

I’ve known for some time that sticking around Tallahassee for an extra year was rather likely, but it feels different to think of it as the official plan now. It’s comforting, really. Honestly, life is quite good, and I don’t mind if it stays largely the same for another year. We’re happy and comfortable. And I like knowing I will be a much more appealing job candidate by doing this. Now I’ve got to get cracking on publishing, presenting at conferences, and the like. Oh yeah, and that whole dissertation thing. No big deal, right? Right. Right? Right … right?

Epcot

2011-05-05T15:22:00.006-04:00

Our final day at Disney World was spent at Epcot. I was quite excited about Epcot. Though I have the impression that Epcot is commonly regarded as the most boring of the Disney World parks, I was more excited about it than the rest. From what I could see online, it looked very cool, and I liked that there was a sense in which Epcot seemed like it would be more museum-like. Having been to Epcot, I have to admit that it wasn’t as awesome as I had hoped. I was particularly disappointed in what they call the World Showcase, which I always took to be the heart of Epcot. World Showcase consists of 11 “pavilions” that are designed to reflect various countries—France, Japan, Norway, Morocco, China, Germany, Mexico, Italy, the United Kingdom, Canada (not kidding), and the United States (still not kidding). I’ve always assumed that each of these “countries” had plenty of room to walk around in and explore, making you feel immersed in the country itself. I was surprised just how tiny each pavilion is. You can’t, for instance, go to France and spend a good hour exploring it, unless you want to spend an hour exploring the one or two gift shops that are there, or waiting in line for an éclair at the café. And that’s about as extensive as the countries get. A bit of a letdown.

One nice perk to visiting Epcot is that we were able to park right at Epcot itself. In fact, we once again arrived at our chosen Disney World theme park just before the gates opened. We got a great parking spot and were able to enter the park as soon as they opened the gates. We took straight to the Spaceship Earth Pavilion, the famous metallic golf ball that everyone thinks of when they think of Epcot. Inside, we were able to go on the Spaceship Earth ride. It is a dark, slow-moving ride that basically transports you through the history of human civilization, from the ancient Egyptians to the Renaissance to the invention of radio, etc. Dame Judi Dench narrates, but it was hard to really hear what was being said. Even so, I was intrigued by the ride. I found myself lamenting modern humankind’s lack of appreciation of intelligence. You look back on the history of humankind, and we’ve spent thousands of years getting to where we are now. During those many millennia, art and literature and high ideals were fought for and often protected at the cost of human life itself. We finally progressed to a day and age where it’s quite possible for us to bask in education and the beauty of knowledge itself, in art and creativity, and what are we doing with it? I feel like we’re collectively pooping on everything that thousands of years of humankind strived so bloody hard to achieve. Hell, if you have the audacity to pursue knowledge for the intrinsic worth of it, you’re practically considered a pariah nowadays. We’re so concerned with making money for large businesses and instantly gratifying ourselves that art, philosophy, music, and everything that makes humankind a miraculous form of life is slowly—but increasingly quickly—being phased out. It’s friggin’ depressing.

To digress, I did have a good time on the Spaceship Earth ride. It snaps a picture of you very early on in the ride, and then at the end of the ride, a computer screen in your “car” turns on, asks you a few questions about what you’re interested in, and then shows you buzzing around in the “future,” doing various activities. I was sitting with Eddie, so Eddie and I got to see our heads put onto cartoon scuba divers, etc., and it was all quite funny and entertaining.

After leaving Spaceship Earth, we took to one of the few rides we knew our entire family would go on, The Seas with Nemo & Friends. Quite disappointingly, the ride was closed and they were telling us that it might open up again in the afternoon, though they weren’t entirely sure. Suck. We didn’t have that many rides planned for the day, so this seemed like quite a loss. With nothing else to do right then, we headed over to The Land Pavilion, where I picked up a few FastPass tickets for the Soarin’ ride, which I was quite excited about. We had a while before we could return and go on that, so we went to the Imagination! Pavilion. We headed into the Journey Into Imagination with Figment ride, and we were literally the only non-Disney employees in the place. The ride wasn’t even running when we showed up because nobody else was on it. We climbed in, and I was hopeful that this would be a fun ride. The online description talks about going through “sensory labs” that show how the five senses can combine with the powers of imagination. I was expecting something awesome, with very cool visuals, funky sound effects, etc. Well, the ride was incredibly lame. It didn’t do much of anything at all. Everything about it was quite lame and disappointing. It really amounted to little more than having a dragon singing at you that you can do a lot with imagination—you can see more with your imagination than with your eyes, etc. But they don’t really demonstrate that for you. Seriously. Online, for instance, it talks about going through an upside-down house. I thought that might be cool, that maybe it would actually make you feel somewhat disoriented. But nope, it’s like a three-second thing where you basically can see what amounts to little more than a playhouse attached to the ceiling. You don’t even feel like you’re in it, really. It’s just above you. Really lame. And that’s about as cool as it got.

Next up was watching the 3-D movie Captain EO. I had seen this many years ago at Disneyland, but I didn’t remember much about it. Being a Michael Jackson thing, I thought it would be quite fun. Unfortunately, it ended up being quite a nuisance for everyone but me, and so that made me not enjoy it very much. Creegan was bothered by the noise, and Edison and Peter were kind of freaked out by it (even though they both refused to wear the 3-D glasses). Eddie even asked if we could leave in the middle of it. So, that wasn’t too fun, either, really. And I don’t think it would have been tremendously entertaining even if the kids were fine. It is admittedly a rather corny movie. And, as I’ve said a few times before, I struggle a bit with 3-D. It often gets blurred because my eyes just don’t focus on it quite right. In short, it wasn’t really worth our time.

After Captain EO, we headed back to the Land Pavilion. It was time to go on Soarin’. Peter was too little to go on it, but I was hoping Eddie might agree and go with me and then possibly with Melanie, too. But Eddie was too freaked out by the idea of the ride, so he refused. Instead, Melanie took all three kids on a boat ride (Living with the Land) that was located right next to Soarin’, and I took my FastPass ticket to get “immediately” onto my ride. It seemed like I had to walk for 15 minutes even to get to the front of the line, even with the FastPass ticket, and once there, I still had to wait 15 minutes or so before I could ride. Still, it was worth it. It proved to be the coolest ride I’d been on at any of the Disney World parks. Basically, you are strapped into a seat, there is a huge movie screen in front of you, and when the ride starts, your seat lifts up into the air with your feet dangling beneath you. The movie starts, and you’re shown scenic images that make you feel like you’re hang gliding all over the country. You fly over the Golden State Bridge, over the Redwood forests, etc. They blow air in your face, and your seat sways and drops and so on to make you feel like you’re really flying around. I loved it. It wasn’t exhilarating to me. It felt incredibly relaxing. I found myself thinking that if I could fly, really just fly, up high above everything, I would probably spend all day doing it. It would just be so calming and peaceful.

Once I was done with Soarin’, it had been 30 minutes since I left Melanie and the kids to the boat ride. They had been done a little while. I felt bad about that. As we sat there and planned our next move, Creegan was lying on his stomach on the floor in front of us. Hilariously, a huge group of young Japanese girls suddenly surrounded Creegan and began taking his picture. It looked like the paparazzi had gathered around our boy. They have babies in Japan, right? I guess not white ones, maybe. Whatever it was, there were probably 20-25 of these girls all huddled around him, giddy, with half a dozen or so of them snapping his picture. We just laughed as they did this, and finally Melanie thought she should take a picture of the girls taking a picture of Creegan. She fumbled to get out our camera, and of course, the moment our camera was out, they all started walking away. It would have been such a great picture, and we lost it. That was really disappointing to us.

It was at this point that we headed to World Showcase, with a brief stop at a playground area so Eddie and Peter could play and Melanie could feed Creegan. We then headed into the countries and did little else for the next while other than walk around, feeling quite hot. Nothing excited us much about the country-themed pavilions, so it kind of felt like we were just walking for the sake of walking. It got a little tiring. I admit to feeling the slightest bit of awe as we walked through the Japan Pavilion. There was something majestic about it, something grand. That was where I felt the most transported to another place, and I liked it. I think it was just because the main building at the Japan Pavilion was so large, you couldn’t help but feel immersed in it even as you walked by. It also seemed very clean and serene there. It made me feel more interested in Japan than I ever have.

Norway was one of only a couple of the countries to offer a ride, the Maelstrom Adventure Cruise. As it says on the Epcot website, Maelstrom takes you aboard a “troll-tormented Viking ship.” It was kind of cool, really, but a bit intense for the kids. It’s a bit dark and fanciful. A cool part, in my opinion, is when you’re going along, and suddenly these three trolls (I guess) are up above you, telling you that you can’t come any further, and they blow your boat backwards and force it to go a different route. I guess that probably doesn’t sound that cool just from me describing it, but it was cool. There were a couple of parts where you’re going backwards for a minute or so, and it’s a bit intimidating, especially if you’re in the back like I was and you look behind yourself and it looks as though you’re heading to a cliff. Did we drop down it? Well, not backwards, and not that exact cliff, but forward and down one right in front of it. Cue sad faces for Eddie and Peter.

Another decent part of World Showcase was in Mexico, which also features a boat ride, albeit a much gentler one. The ride in question, the Gran Fiesta Tour Starring the Three Caballeros, was cool for a couple of reasons. One is that it went through the middle of a Mexican restaurant that was at the Mexico Pavilion, a restaurant that looked really cool and that I wish we could have eaten at. The restaurant is quite dark and is situated around an Aztec pyramid. Pretty awesome looking. Another reason the boat ride was cool is the fireworks that blast off above you as you’re on the boat. They’re not real fireworks, but LED lights (or something) in the ceiling. Still, they looked pretty cool. It was nice to go on another ride that the kids liked before our time at Epcot was done.

After enjoying the Mexico ride, we moseyed back toward the front of Epcot. We thought about going on one more ride, Ellen’s Energy Adventure, but we hesitated when we saw that it is a 45-minute ride. We were all feeling quite worn out, and the ride had a warning that at least parts of it might be a bit intense for younger children. Given that our kids had been so timid about most things, and given that we assumed Creegan would almost certainly get quite fussy sometime within that 45 minutes, we decided to be done. We made a very brief stop at Innoventions, which is basically like a children’s museum, and then headed back to our van. We headed to Fuddrucker’s for an early dinner (a none-too-enjoyable experience, I’m afraid, but that’s a story for a different day) and then back to the hotel. Our Disney World trip was complete.

I’ll conclude this entry with the few photos we took at Epcot. Epcot was a bit more picturesque than Magic Kingdom, so I do wish I had taken more photos. When will I learn my lesson? I don’t know. I’m not very good at learning that one.

Edison and Peter just inside the entrance gates of Epcot.

Another picture, with cute hugging.

Edison and Peter await our turn to head into the Captain EO theater. They’re not too thrilled by the music playing in the lobby.

The tail end of the group of Japanese girls who fawned over Creegan. There were many, many more than this, I assure you.

The end!

Disney Done Right

2011-04-30T11:57:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, Melanie, the kids, and I got back from Orlando, where we spent three nights and finished up the remaining two days on our four-day Disney World tickets. As you may recall, our first day at Disney World’s Magic Kingdom back in early March left me feeling anything but enchanted. This time around, Melanie and I followed the advice of some good friends and had an immensely more enjoyable experience. In fact, we concluded our time at Disney World wishing we could buy annual passes. Knowing how to do things right changes everything for the better. Now we’re pros.

To give you an idea of how much more smoothly our Disney World trip went this time around, consider the following comparative data:

First Trip to Magic Kingdom
Time passed between leaving hotel and entering the Magic Kingdom gates: 2.5 hours
Time of entry into Magic Kingdom: 12:35pm
Time passed between entering the Magic Kingdom gates and leaving the Disney World parking lot to head back to hotel: 7 hours, 10 minutes
Highly Irksome Parade Interruptions During Visit: 3
Total attractions experienced: 5 (including 2 non-rides)
Average time spent at Disney World per attraction: 86 minutes
Longest Wait Time: 45 minutes
Estimated Average Wait Time per Attraction: 25 minutes

Second Trip to Magic Kingdom
Time passed between leaving hotel and entering the Magic Kingdom gates: 30 minutes
Time of entry into Magic Kingdom: 8:05am
Time passed between entering the Magic Kingdom gates and leaving the Disney World parking lot to head back to hotel: 4.5 hours, maximum
Highly Irksome Parade Interruptions During Visit: 0
Total attractions experienced: 11 (12 if you include repeats; all rides)
Average time spent at Disney World per attraction: 22.5 minutes (max)
Longest Wait Time: 15 minutes
Estimated Average Wait Time per Attraction: 3 minutes (most had no wait time)

Admittedly, I think it helped that we didn’t show up during a week when several schools in the state were on spring break. But the real advantage came from getting into the Magic Kingdom right when it opened. To achieve this, we drove ourselves to the park, which cost $14 in parking fees but which was a lot faster and easier, both coming and going. Arriving at Disney World when it opened also meant that, like our friends had told us, we could spend the first couple of hours at the park walking onto rides with little to no wait whatsoever. It was blissful.

Here are the rides we enjoyed, in the order we enjoyed them:

Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin

On this ride, you sit in a rotatable seat with two laser guns attached to what might as well be called the dashboard. You can spin your car around and shoot at various aliens that have come to “attack.” You rack up points for hitting targets with the laser beam as you go along, the points being displayed on your dashboard. (It’s like a video game in that respect.) I sat with Edison, and he was very nervous up until the last minute or so of the ride, at which point he finally stopped burying his head into my arm and started playing along. At that point, it became his favorite ride and he asked to go on it again immediately after it was finished. We made him wait a little bit.

Tomorrowland Transit Authority PeopleMover

Not much happens on this ride. Most of the time, you’re in the dark or in some empty corridors, not doing much else than moving. I guess that makes the name of the ride appropriate enough, but I’m still wondering if more isn’t supposed to happen than did, or if the ride is so-to-speak under construction. There just isn’t much to it at all. But, despite the ride’s mild nature, Eddie and Peter would both seize up a little bit whenever the car we rode in would round corners or speed up slightly. They’re timid boys, alright.

Tomorrowland Speedway

Melanie took Edison and Peter on this, whilst I held onto Creegan, who was too small to be allowed on the ride. Edison steered the race car while Melanie controlled the gas pedal and Peter became the helpless passenger. I stood up in the grandstand to watch my family pass by, but once they got a few feet past the starting line, I couldn’t see them anymore. I nabbed the following pictures from a distance while trying to balance a sleeping Creegan in my arms. Not an ideal picture-taking situation, but at least I got something.

Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin (again)

Edison was clamoring to go back on this ride, so we indulged him. I sat with Peter this time around and tried to make it as fun for him as possible. He was fairly nervous on most rides and didn’t seem too thrilled to be revisiting this one, so I tried to be extra silly about it. I kept telling the aliens that I wasn’t going to let them get my Peter. Peter gradually warmed up to that, even cracking a smile and letting out the occasional giggle, but he always remained a bit cautious. Even after our second visit to this ride, Edison kept asking to go back on it. We never did, but that didn’t stop him from bringing it up and trying to add it back onto our itinerary.

Mad Tea Party (AKA the teacups)

I’m pretty sure this is the only ride that Peter actually requested we go on. He giggled with delight as he watched the ride in operation while we were in line. Of course, he got more nervous once we were in the teacups and spinning around, but he seemed to enjoy it in the end. When all was said and done, Peter declared the teacups his favorite ride of all, and whenever Edison would petition us to return to Buzz Lightyear, Peter would toss in his vote to return to the teacups.

The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh

A fun ride with just a bit of psychedelia thrown in. During part of the ride, you’re in Pooh’s heffalumps and woozles dream, complete with black lighting that makes everything glow vibrantly. Kind of cool.

It’s a Small World

A friendly and calm enough ride for Eddie and Peter to enjoy without much nervousness at all, thankfully. We went on this one to pass some time while waiting to go on the Peter Pan ride, for which we had gotten some FastPass tickets (tickets that allow you to come back during an assigned window of time and board the ride without waiting in the normal line). I don’t know how long a ride It’s a Small World is, but compared to everything else, it felt incredibly long. But we enjoyed it. Even so, I couldn’t help wondering how suppressed the female Muslim dolls were, out there singing and dancing with their faces covered. I couldn’t help thinking that they might get beheaded if they didn’t perform well enough. Kind of a downer. There was also a moment at the end of the ride where we were stopped for just a minute. It was right at the end, where you can see the brightly colored signs saying “Goodbye” in a variety of languages. I thought it would be especially demented if, at this stage of the ride, they sink your boat and release piranhas into the water. It would be a tragic way to go, being eaten alive while a chorus of happy-sounding children sing all around you and a collage of signs bidding you adieu stands tauntingly before you.

Prince Charming Regal Carrousel

I took Eddie and Peter on this while Melanie fed Creegan. There were five horses per row, and Edison, Peter and I were the second group in line, so I didn’t think we’d have a hard time getting on three horses side-by-side. But, as I strapped Edison and Peter in, some father came along and strapped a kid into the horse directly next to Peter, while two other kids climbed onto the two horses after that. I ended up having to stand, which hadn’t been my plan. I was slightly perturbed. I’d think if you saw me putting my kid into a horse while standing right next to an unoccupied horse, you might think I’m planning on sitting there.

Peter Pan’s Flight

The first and only ride on which we used a FastPass ticket. That dropped our wait time from 25 minutes (the estimated wait when we got our FastPass tickets) to zero. That was nice, as this was the only ride we went on that ever had such a long wait.

The Haunted Mansion

Before our first trip to the Magic Kingdom back in early March, Edison claimed he wanted to go in the haunted house at Disney World. Once we were at Disney World, he changed his mind. This time around, knowing we were returning to the Magic Kingdom, Edison said he wanted to be “brave and smart” and go in the haunted house. When we actually got to the Haunted Mansion, however, Edison was pretty adamant about not going on it. But he didn’t express this very enthusiastically until they were closing the doors on us, which made it a bit tricky to change our minds. Eddie ended up being a trooper about it, albeit a reluctant one, and I think he even got some enjoyment out of the ride in the end. He certainly wasn’t terrified the whole time, which I was glad about. I was his age or even a little bit older when I backed out from going in the Haunted Mansion with my dad. So, Eddie outdid me.

Pirates of the Caribbean

I was amazed that we were able to walk right onto this ride, even though it was noon-ish when we got to it. Our wait probably would have been longer had we not gone down the right side of the ropes that divide the line into two. The usher at the entrance to the ride was telling people to go down both sides of the ropes, but nobody was going to the right. We did, but we felt a bit unsure about it, just because nobody else was. I especially started to doubt our choice when we ended up walking down several long and empty halls. I kept asking Melanie, “The guy did say to go down both sides, right?” Melanie assured me he had. A few people were following us, too, and I felt worried that we were leading them astray. But, finally, we ended up meeting up with the main group again, albeit boarding the ride on the opposite side. That’s OK, though, that’s what was supposed to happen. The side we ended up on had much fewer people, so we didn’t have to wait at all to get on a boat. Had we gone to the left with the rest of the crowd at the beginning, we probably would have had a 5-10 minute wait time. That wouldn’t have been significant, but I’ll take immediately boarding any day.

Walt Disney World Railroad

For our final ride of the day, we went on the leisurely steam engine train that makes a complete circle around the periphery of the Magic Kingdom. It wasn’t anything exciting, but we knew Eddie and Peter would enjoy riding a train, so we went for it. While waiting for the train, Melanie and I both snapped a few more photographs. I had planned on taking many more photographs on this trip to Disney World, but of course, I didn’t. It always feels like an interruption to stop and get the camera out, so I frequently chose not to take pictures even when I considered doing so. Maybe that’s lame, but oh well. I’m not that sad about it.

By the time it was 1 p.m. and we were leaving the Magic Kingdom, we felt like we had been there all day. We were worn out and ready to go. And yet we had plenty of hours left in the day. It was great. We were able to go back to the hotel, relax, go out to a steak dinner, and then head back to the hotel for a pre-bedtime swim. Compare that to our first day at Disney World last March and there’s just no denying that we did something incredibly right this time around, and incredibly wrong last time. Sure, we could have spent a lot longer at the Magic Kingdom and gone on several more rides, but we didn’t even want to, and there’s nothing we bypassed that we felt strongly about trying. We got what we wanted out of the trip, and we got it quickly and easily. Perfection.

In the very near future, I’ll write about our visit to Epcot, which concluded our Disney World experience.

Movie Review: The King’s Speech

2011-04-23T11:03:00.010-04:00

The King's Speech
(R)
Directed by Tom Hooper
Running Time: 118 minutes
Originally Released: December 24, 2010

* * * * (out of four)

One of my favorite scenes in cinematic history is from Milos Forman’s Amadeus, when Mozart dictates from his deathbed to Salieri the symphony that at that moment exists only in Mozart’s mind. It is a beautifully filmed and very powerful scene. As I watched 2011’s Oscar winner for Best Picture, The King’s Speech, I was more than once reminded of that masterful scene in Amadeus. That the delivering of a political speech could be made so musical—both literally and figuratively, as one who watches the film learns—is assuredly mesmerizing, but it is just one of the merits possessed by The King’s Speech. If you think the film is simply about a stammering politician’s fear of public speaking, you are wrong. It is about self-confidence, self-acceptance, acceptance of acceptance, courage, honesty, friendship, and just about every other virtuous human characteristic. The fascinating historical backdrop is just the icing on the cake.

Colin Firth stars as Prince Albert, the Duke of York, who became Britain’s King George VI after his brother abdicated the throne in 1936. Known as “Bertie” to his family, Prince Albert struggles with the public speaking that is so often a part of his political duties. Bertie stammers, a problem that escalates when he is put into high pressure situations like delivering a speech to an overcrowded Wembley Stadium. Bertie’s wife, Elizabeth (played by Helena Bonham Carter), has tried to help her husband by seeking doctors who are trained in speech therapy, but to little avail. Eventually, Elizabeth happens upon an Australian speech therapist, Lionel Logue (played by Geoffrey Rush), who agrees to help Bertie provided that the prince accepts Logue’s unorthodox practices. The first encounter between Logue and the prince proves contentious, but it also provides the first glimmer of genuine hope that Bertie has ever had. Before long, Logue becomes one of Bertie’s most trusted confidants, the therapy extending well beyond the mechanics of speech production, as the prince deals with his father’s death, his brother’s ascension to and subsequent abdication of the throne, and of course, Bertie’s own coronation.

I will admit that I didn’t have much hope in The King’s Speech before I watched it. I knew all the hype surrounding the film, particularly that it had won Best Picture from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, but I took it for granted that the film would be vastly overrated. So many of the movies that receive a great deal of praise turn out to be mediocre, and that seems especially true of period pieces, which the Academy—often unfairly—reverences. This time around, however, the Academy did right. The King’s Speech is an excellently crafted, beautifully filmed, and brilliantly written film carried on the back of two terrific performances. Firth’s Oscar for Best Actor is well-deserved; it is a pity Rush was not extended the same courtesy. Though he was nominated for Best Supporting Actor, I will assume he lost only because he had previously picked up a Best Actor trophy for 1996’s Shine. (The Academy is stingy about giving out multiple awards to the same person. Funny enough, that makes Rush’s loss a political one. Ah, politics!) To be sure, Rush steals the film, and indeed, it is the first scene shared between Rush and Firth that demonstrates the film’s greatness. It was during their first exchange that I was struck upon the head with the realization that I was watching something quite grand. The quality of the film did not waver from that point on.

Perhaps I should mention that Bonham Carter was also nominated for an Oscar for her supporting role. To that, I offer a most resounding “meh.” It’s a baffling nomination, in my opinion, if not for the fact that such unwarranted nominations are rather prevalent in the supporting actress category. By default, these nominations tend to go rather indiscriminately to the supporting actresses from whatever films are filling up the more prestigious categories, such as Best Picture and Best Director. Bonham Carter lost out to The Fighter’s Melissa Leo, who was only slightly more deserving, while Rush lost to The Fighter’s Christian Bale (an admittedly great performance, though not the one I wish the Academy would have recognized with a trophy). The King’s Speech did nab the Best Director award for Tom Hooper’s work, however, which is an appropriate bestowal. I’m actually finding myself desirous to watch the movie again. That doesn’t happen very often, especially with British period dramas. The fact that I am eager to re-watch a movie about saying a lot—well, that says a lot.

Potpourri No. 31

2011-04-11T14:31:00.002-04:00

Life, served up deli-style, sliced nice and thin…

Job Security
In my previous potpourri post, I mentioned the fact that I’d been given a teaching gig for the latter part of the summer. I’ve since been told that I’m incredibly likely to teach in the fall, too. Rather than logic, however, I’ll be teaching an introductory ethics course in the fall. (Applied ethics, I should say, which means that it’s more about ethical issues than about ethical theory, per se.) I think that’ll be quite fun, though I wish I had more time to deliberate about what to do with the course. I had to choose the textbook for the course today, over four months before the class begins. As a result, I’m going with a textbook that has been used by instructors for whom I’ve TA’d in the past. That gives me some familiarity with the text, though ideally, I’d have more time to consider other options. There are a few ethics textbooks that I’ve seen online that pique my interest, but without being able to look inside of them, I don’t want to commit to them. So, I’m going with the familiar. Bummer. I take some comfort in knowing I can supplement the required text with other readings that I can make available to the class online. Maybe I can spice things up that way.

Feeling Special
I have finally scheduled my special area exam for next Monday, April 18th, at noon. Given that I still have a week to prepare for the exam, I’m feeling pretty good about it. Hopeful. It’s good to be getting to this point. After this, the next milestone in seeking my Ph.D. is to write up and defend a dissertation prospectus. I’m quite happy to say that I’ve had a lot more ideas about this lately. In terms of developing ideas, the last few weeks have been a very fruitful time for me. It’s exhilarating. It makes me hopeful that I can write up and defend the prospectus very, very soon after taking the special area exam. Wish me luck!

Bloody Interesting!
I recently watched a documentary called The Science of Sex Appeal that was available through Netflix Instant Viewing. It was quite fascinating, but one of the most interesting things to me is that when a woman ovulates, she actually becomes sexier, in a variety of ways, to men. In one study, they took two photographs of the same woman—one taken during ovulation, and one taken when she wasn’t ovulating—and put them side by side. They told men that the two photos were of twin sisters, and they asked the men to select which woman they thought was the most attractive. The overwhelming majority of men chose the picture of the woman that was taken during ovulation. Seeing the pictures side by side, there is a noticeable difference, a kind of luminescence in the ovulating woman. Even more fascinating, in a different study, men listened to pre-recorded audio of various women reading the same line of (non-sexual) text. They had the men rank how sexy the voices were. Unbeknownst to the men, some of the voices they heard were of the same woman, but recorded during ovulation. Again, the same woman’s voice was ranked as sexier when she was ovulating than when she was not! I found that quite fascinating. And, if you’re curious, ovulating women are more likely to be attracted to men, too. Ovulating women respond more positively to smelling sweat-stained t-shirts than do non-ovulating women.

Clearing Up Some Clutter
Am I the only one who has a tendency to leave open web pages for future reference, and thus to end up with tons of open web pages that just sit there for weeks on end? Sometimes, I leave something open because I want to remember to share it with someone else. Sometimes, I leave a page open to remind me that I need to do something. If I bookmark these pages with the intent of revisiting them, I never do so, and typically, I don’t want a permanent bookmark to the page anyway. Something else needs to be done. Well, I finally realized that I could just post some of these links on my blog. That way, they’re not completely gone, but they’re not taking up space in my bookmarks either. So, here are some random things from the web that, for whatever reason, I found interesting:

Free Will Being Discussed in the New York Times

The IFC’s 50 Greatest Opening Title Sequences of All Time

And here is a video of “natural hallucinogen” – and yes, it really works:

Eddie Update

2011-04-05T20:18:00.002-04:00

I have tried writing this blog entry numerous times, and for some reason I’m finding it very difficult. It all comes out like crap, and I’m not capturing what I want to capture. The bottom line is that Edison has now been home from the hospital for two full days. He’s doing well, but I admittedly wish he seemed more enthusiastic than he often does. I think the only reason my hopes are higher is because Edison seemed happier and happier each day after the surgery, and at times, he almost seemed like his old self. He would laugh and make silly jokes. Then, when we brought him home, he amazed us by freely walking around the house, unhesitatingly climbing up and down on the couch or bending down to pick something up, and asking for and eating various foods. It was so awesome to see him behaving largely like normal. Since then, however, he has seemed a bit less cheerful. He seems tired, which makes sense, and his spirits don’t seem quite as high. I don’t think anything’s wrong with him, but I let myself worry sometimes anyway. I know there is still a chance of an abscess forming at the surgical site, and I know that if such an abscess does form, Edison’s condition will regress. Thus, anytime he is even remotely less chipper than he was a few minutes earlier, I start to fret. I know I’m being a bit irrational, but that’s how I feel.

On the plus side, Edison’s digestive system now seems to be operating at normal. This was one of my biggest sources of fear. The appendix has nothing to do with digestion, but having surgery can upset the digestive system and it can take a few days for things to “wake up,” as the nurses at the hospital put it. For the first few days after surgery, the nurses and doctors who would listen to Edison’s stomach always said they wished it were making more noise. I was worried that this would delay us in coming home. Finally, I was put at ease by a surgeon who assured me that, since Edison had had a bowel movement 48 hours after surgery, things had to be working. According to her, we didn’t need to worry even though another 48 hours or so had passed and another bowel movement had yet to follow. I was extremely grateful on Sunday morning when Edison’s stomach suddenly sounded a lot more active. He didn’t have another bowel movement until Monday, over 72 hours after his first post-surgery BM, but he ended up having three by the time Monday was over. And two today, so things are looking good. (Well, not literally, I guess. It looks quite gross, but we’re happy about it.)

Another high point since Edison’s return home is when he took his first shower. Because he cannot submerge his surgical wounds, he cannot take a bath like he is accustomed to. And so, yesterday, Melanie gave him a shower. He was quite reluctant about that at first, but he decided he quite enjoys them. He told Melanie he wants to take a shower everyday now. How mature, eh?

Melanie and I have been sad that we haven’t taken more pictures to chronicle this ordeal. Our camera battery was dead, and up until this evening, we thought we had lost the battery charger. We assumed we left it in the hotel in Orlando when we recently went to Disney World. Then, tonight, Melanie finally stumbles upon the charger when we’re not even looking for it. Of course, this happens the day after I order a replacement charger online. Oh well. Hopefully that one can be returned without much of a problem. All said and done, what this means is that we have only two pictures of Edison during his time in the hospital. They were taken by me on my cell phone, which means the image quality is very poor. The photos were taken on Wednesday, March 30th at 4:42 a.m. as Edison got wheeled down to the pre-surgery waiting room. I had considered taking photos with my cell phone before this, but it usually didn’t seem like an ideal time. I finally snapped these photos at the behest of the guy (a surgical nurse, I assume) in the first image below. He was quite adamant that I take a photo, and that he be included in it. He was rather upbeat about it all, like it was something really cool. It struck me as a bit odd, especially since I don’t think he was even going to be a part of Edison’s surgery in particular. Anyway, these are the only two photos we have, so here they are.

Notice in this second picture that Edison is licking his lips. He did this constantly after being taken to the ER. He was incredibly thirsty, but as soon as they knew they would be doing a CT scan, and afterward knowing that they would be doing surgery, they did not allow him to drink any water. They did not even allow him to suck on an ice chip. Even in Edison’s sleep, his tongue kept lapping at his lips, trying to moisten them. It was sad.

Emergency Surgeries: A Family Tradition

2011-03-30T22:24:00.002-04:00

Seeing as how my blog readership consists almost exclusively of family members and very close friends, most of you are already aware of what’s transpired over the last 24 hours. The story actually begins roughly two weeks ago. Edison and Peter, within an hour of each other, both got sick and vomited a couple of times within a 20-minute window. They then seemed completely normal and remained as such for three to four days. Then, once again, within a 20-minute window, they would vomit once or twice. They then returned to normalcy and repeated the process a few days later. It was very strange to us, but we assumed things would improve.

Peter finally stopped vomiting, but Eddie took a turn for the worse. On Saturday, he actually seemed full-blown sick. Rather than puking a couple of times over a 20-minute timeframe, he vomited periodically throughout the day. He seemed ill, too. After vomiting, he did not return to his normal self, but remained still on the couch, not wanting to say or do much. Saturday night was especially vomitous. Sunday, too, he puked a few times throughout the day and didn’t seem well. Finally, on Monday, Edison seemed normal and healthy again. He ate plenty and played around. At dinner, he ate very little and seemed tired, but not too horrible. By 11 p.m., he vomited once again.

On Tuesday, Eddie was again lethargic and lacked an appetite. He did not vomit, and he drank various things throughout the day, but he clearly didn’t feel well. He also started complaining about pain on the right side of his abdomen. By the late afternoon, he was experiencing mild fevers. The pain in his abdomen seemed to be getting worse. We were quite concerned about this. Although Eddie said it only hurt when he would move, it reminded me all too much of my experience with diverticulitis. Of course, with his pain being on the opposite side of the abdomen than mine, I suspected appendicitis. That was my only guess, and thus my only real fear.

I took Edison to an “Urgent Care” facility around 8 p.m. After being seen, the physician too suggested appendicitis. However, I would have to take Edison to the ER of the hospital to find out for sure. Only they would have the means of giving Edison a CT scan, which would be needed to make an accurate diagnosis. And so, I took Eddie to the emergency room. It was the best emergency room experience I have ever had, in part because the time spent at the hospital-affiliated Urgent Care counted toward our wait time at the ER. I don’t know precisely how long it took, but I’d guess that within 30 minutes or less, Edison and I were being guided to a hospital room to await further testing.

Eddie was such a trooper. Over the next several hours, they would subject him to an examination almost identical to what I underwent back in late September / early October. It saddened me greatly when I learned that Edison’s CT scan would require, like mine, an enema that would have to be held in. I didn’t know if a four-year-old was capable of such a feat. The enema was the worst part of my experience, and I dreaded putting him through that. Amazingly, he handled it far, far better than I did. He didn’t cry or let out even a single moan, the entire time. He did so well that I feared he must not have held the fluid in his bowels after all. I worried that he must have released it, and that his releasing of the pressure explained why he performed so commendably. I especially worried about this when, after the CT scan was over, Edison failed to empty his bowels when told he could do so. Surely that meant he no longer had the fluid in his system! But he must have, because the CT scan images turned out well enough for them to diagnose him. The nurses (doctors? technicians?) at the CT scan told me afterward that children often perform better than adults and somewhat commonly don’t empty their bowels once the CT scan is complete. One of the women theorized, in not so many words, that this is because children are more recently potty trained and thus better able to resist the urge to go whenever they want. She further speculated that this is because children assume they’ll get in trouble if they don’t hold it in. I doubt this last comment would apply to Edison’s mindset, but it was her theory.

It really wasn’t that long after the CT scan that the doctor came to Edison’s room and told me that his problem was indeed appendicitis. That meant surgery was guaranteed, as no other treatment is possible. Eddie is quite aware of what surgery is; at home, he sometimes uses my electric nose hair trimmer to play surgeon. He’ll administer anesthesia and everything. So, knowing that surgery entails cutting someone’s body open, Edison was initially quite alarmed by hearing that he would require surgery. This was news I had been dreading for that very reason. But I was again incredibly impressed when he quickly calmed down about it. I reminded him that he would receive “medicine” that would make him fall asleep and ensure he couldn’t feel or hear or see anything during the surgery, and he stopped fretting. I asked him if he could be brave about it, and he nodded sincerely.

The doctor that diagnosed the appendicitis told me that the surgeon would be coming to talk to me “in about an hour,” and that the surgery would need to be performed that night. The surgeon didn’t show up until two or three hours after that, but I was then assured that the surgery would take place before dawn. It was probably 4:30 a.m. or so when they started wheeling Edison in his bed toward the surgery area of the hospital. We were taken to a waiting room, introduced to the anesthesiologist, and told it would happen very soon. A short while later, they told us there had been a delay because another emergency surgery (more emergency than ours) had come up. Edison was sleeping soundly at this point, and I fell asleep too. At 6:30 a.m., they awoke us and said it was time.

The sad thing at this point is that Edison was kind of out of it, so he was rather distraught as they wheeled him away. I had a very brief second to lean in and tell him that it was time, that (as I had discussed with him earlier) I would not be with him when they made him fall asleep, but that I would be in a nearby room and see him as soon as possible after the surgery was over. I don’t know how much he processed my words at that moment. He was crying and didn’t seem completely happy to be getting wheeled away. That was rather heartbreaking. I was taken to the surgery wait room, not sure how long it would take. I was told the surgery would take about an hour, but I wasn’t sure how much prep time still remained. I didn’t plan on seeing anybody too terribly soon.

To my great surprise, the operating surgeon came into the waiting room at 7:30 and told me that everything was done. The surgery had gone well. When they opened Edison up, they learned that the appendix had actually perforated, but an abscess had grown over the rupture. It was a little unclear, but I got the impression that the abscess, in this case, had been helpful, though an abscess itself is not a good thing and can cause problems. They told me that Edison would have a stomach drain (or something like that) still coming out of him, designed to extract any excess fluids from that area of his body. That helps ensure that an infection doesn’t occur and another abscess form. There’s a 30% chance of such an abscess forming after the surgery, but you won’t be able to tell for 5-7 days because the patients show improvement for several days regardless. So, in a week from now, if Edison seems to be getting sick again, that’s not a good sign. I’m very hopeful that that won’t occur.

It hasn’t been a fun 24 hours. On the other hand, I’m glad things went so quickly. I found that my anxiety peaked whenever I had down time and could do little more than reflect on the situation and whatever negative repercussions (both hypothetical and actual) lie ahead. It’s been special to me that I’ve been the one to be here with Eddie through all of this. I’ve been amazed by his bravery and kindness through it all. When they first took him down for surgery, they gave him a puppy Beanie Baby to keep. He asked me a moment later if I could ask for another puppy, so we could take one home to Peter, so Peter wouldn’t feel sad not to have one of his own. What a sweet thought in the midst of everything.

I’m writing this blog entry from the hospital bed adjacent to Edison’s own. I’ll be staying with him tonight, and we’ll probably be here until Friday morning. Melanie visited earlier today, and I went home and slept for a couple of hours while she was here. Now I’m back and we’ll probably repeat the process tomorrow. Edison has been sleeping soundly for a couple of hours now, which is wonderful. He’s very tender in his abdomen, which makes it hard for him to move around, but he’s done impressively even so. He’s done well with walking around, which will help his stomach “come back to life,” they say. He’s on a liquid diet for now, but if things continue to go well, he’ll probably get some crackers or something like that tomorrow. Within another day or so, he should be able to eat like normal. Or so I understand.

I’m sure there are a million details I have overlooked that, if I thought about them, I’d be tempted to cram into the end here, just to capture them all. But that’s OK. No need for that. I’ll write them for myself later. To conclude, I’ll just say that the last six months have been unbelievable. Three of the people in my family of five have ended up in the emergency room, and two of them have had emergency surgeries. I’m really hoping this won’t turn into a fad. Then again, maybe it already has.

Excerpt from an Unpublished Manuscript

2011-03-25T11:11:00.005-04:00

Quentin was 24, a young professional earning more than his keep at Walton & Hestfield, a job he had secured thanks to a debt Quentin’s father owed to Quentin’s uncle. Quentin’s résumé placed him well beneath the scores of other job applicants salivating at the prospect of joining the prestigious firm located where else but at the corner of Lexington and Vine, the heart of the city. Quentin’s uncle had pulled some strings, flexed his networking muscles, and ensured that the unqualified Quentin received a job offer from the executives whom the uncle regularly humiliated on the Havenshire Country Club golf course (the nicer of the two courses, of course). Quentin was oblivious to his underqualification. He was much too optimistic, much too kindhearted and trusting, to realize people ever acted in ways that betrayed their true opinions of him. Quentin’s naivety gave him an innocent kind of confidence that, so long as one never learned just how dimwitted Quentin could be, made him quite charming. This and his equally unassuming brand of handsomeness—the best kind of handsomeness, really—explained his surprising, though always short-lived, success with the ladies. There was a tendency for single women, upon meeting Quentin, to view him as a kind of modern-day prince in appropriately khaki-fied armor. A good three or four dates could pass before a woman realized that Quentin’s aloofness was not the manifestation of boyish charm but of a sincere lack of mental capabilities. Usually, one or two attempts at deep conversation would solidify the woman’s suspicions, and she would suddenly find herself too busy to meet Quentin for dinner, to see that movie with him, to return his phone calls, or in some cases, to come back from the restroom to her loudly masticating date. Fortunately, Quentin’s genuine good faith in others had spared him a lot of hurt feelings over the years. He rarely, if ever, begrudged these women, assuming that each and every time they said “something has come up,” by golly, they meant it. In the world of romance, Quentin was like a well-aged man who always carries an umbrella, no matter the forecast and regardless of the amount of blue in the sky. He expected the unexpected, and as such, he regarded the sudden shifts in the amorous weather as no big deal, and more importantly, as nobody’s fault.

July 17th marked the 18-month anniversary of Quentin’s daily train ride to work. He failed to notice this, but rode the train in an exceptionally jubilant mood that morning nonetheless. Quentin enjoyed his daily commute. Taking cues from his fellow passengers, Quentin had decided after his first week at Walton & Hestfield that the time spent on the train each morning should be passed either reading the morning paper or playing Sudoku. Quentin hadn’t so much as touched a newspaper since 2001, when as a freshman in high school, he was required to report on current events for his social science class. The weekly assignment had bored him extensively, and he now felt an adamant aversion to reading newspapers voluntarily. He opted for Sudoku, bought himself a thick little book of over 500 Sudoku puzzles at the local newsstand, and attempted to master the game over the next three weeks. Try as he might, Quentin eventually gave up on the game, finding it impossible to make the numbers in each three-by-three square add up to 9. On the 11th day of playing the game, he experienced momentary elation at the realization that plugging negative numbers into some of the squares might just be the secret to conquering the game. Sadly, Quentin successfully solved only one Sudoku puzzle, even after this grand discovery. (The winning game involved placing the value “n+1” in the upper left hand corner of the square, a move Quentin thought ingenious but was never able successfully to replicate.)

Waving the proverbial white flag at publishers of Sudoku puzzles everywhere, Quentin decided he would spend his morning commutes immersed in the puzzle game that had absorbed so much of his time as a kid—Mad Libs. Not being the brightest bushel in the shed (as Quentin sometimes said of others), Quentin was flustered by Mad Libs that required much more of his grammatical and syntactical prowess than the supplying of simple nouns and adjectives. He was particularly annoyed at the frequent demand for verbs ending in –ing, a seemingly unreasonable demand given that the commonest verbs in the English language—“run,” “eat,” and “swim,” for example—do not end in –ing. As a youth, Quentin beamed with pride whenever he thought of new –ing verbs—“bring,” “sing,” “spring,” “swing”—which he jotted down in a spiral notebook and kept hidden underneath his bed lest someone else reap the benefits of his work. The list scarcely made it to half a dozen words, and Quentin wasn’t even sure if “ching” counted. It wasn’t long before Quentin’s go-to list of verbs ending in –ing felt overused. Still, he felt resigned to use them, even as the words so often failed to make sense within the context of the stories they were meant to complement. Quentin chalked it up to the fact that Mad Libs thrive on being zany.

As an adult, Quentin felt obligated to take Mad Libs to the next level. In the most recent two weeks, Quentin had started timing his games, giving himself no longer than two minutes to fill in every blank on a given Mad Lib page. This put a great deal of pressure on Quentin’s brain, but he took pleasure in the adrenaline that seeped into his veins as a result. He also found that many of the Mad Libs turned out all the funnier because of the frantic pace with which he completed them. This was not so much because Quentin’s sense of humor and creativity were elevated during the timed games, but because the time constraints caused him to be sloppy. Quentin snorted when he once discovered that he had written “cringe” for a verb ending in –ing, and he laughed out loud when he saw moments later that he had written “sleeping” as a verb ending in –ing on the very same page. He was doubly delighted by the latter gaffe, since “sleeping” was clearly not the kind of verb ending in –ing that the writers of Mad Libs were seeking (it was, after all and properly speaking, a derivative of “sleep,” which does not end in –ing), and yet somehow, the word actually made sense within the context of the story! It was one of the first times this had happened for Quentin. (He made a mental note to send a letter to the publishers of Mad Libs recounting this tale of irony.)

On this morning’s commute, Quentin’s good spirits lasted just until the train passed Summoner’s Park, at which point Quentin turned the page to a particularly brutal game of Mad Libs and felt his enthusiasm dissipate like passed gas. Why, the whole page asked for no more nouns and adjectives than three and four, respectively. Other than that, the game insisted on quite a few verbs and adverbs, plus one name of a person in the room. Being on a train rather than in a room, Quentin was unsure of how to respond to the latter request. He ate up a good 30 seconds wondering if he should jot down his own name, the only name of anyone in the vicinity that he knew. He did eventually scribble “Quentin” onto the two-inch black line, but he felt he was bending the rules in doing so. He promised himself he would read the Mad Lib again once he was officially in a room if it turned out that his not being in a room made the story incoherent. Continuing on, Quentin sweated and strained to finish the puzzle. With 15 seconds to go, Quentin still had one verb ending in –ing and one adverb needing to be filled. Furiously tapping his feet and chewing on his bottom lip, Quentin racked his brain. 10 seconds remaining! “Sting!” his brain shouted at him, and Quentin’s eyes went wide. His shaking right hand manipulated the ballpoint pen across one of the empty lines. His gaze then fell to the lone void remaining at the bottom of the page. “C’mon, adverb! Adverb, adverb, adverb!” Quentin thought to himself.

Five seconds remaining!

Quentin wiped the sweat from his brow, his curly chestnut hair quickly becoming matted against his moist forehead. “Adverb! Like an adjective verb!” Quentin continued to prod himself.

Four seconds!

Nothing was coming to mind! Quentin groaned. The other passengers on the train glanced over at him in curiosity. Guttural moans were typically reserved for the sleeping and inebriated vagabonds who frequented the train. Only rarely were such bellows proffered by the business class, and typically that was just before the groaning individual made sick. Those nearest to Quentin scooted ever so slightly away from him, though he was too immersed his game to notice their impromptu, synchronous emigration.

Three seconds!

“I need an adverb! I need an adverb!” Quentin’s mind screamed at itself, but to no avail. His brain continued to give him the silent treatment.

Two seconds!

The consternation was too much. Quentin leaped from his seat and turned to his fellow passengers. Instinctually, the huddled mass of commuters looked up at him in rapt attention. Grabbing onto a handrail and steadying himself, Quentin cleared his throat and, with one second remaining, blurted aloud:

“I need an adverb! Quickly!”

Wooing in the 21st Century

2011-03-17T16:34:00.000-04:00

WARNING!! ONE INSTANCE OF STRONG LANGUAGE FOLLOWS! NOT KIDDING! CAREFUL, MOM!

The introductory ethics course in which I’m a TA recently had an exam. As one of the students was leaving the exam, he hurriedly tossed a folded-up sheet of paper toward a female student sitting a few rows in front of where he had been sitting. Instead of dropping onto the female student’s desk, however, the folded-up sheet of paper fell back behind the male student and landed smack dab in the middle of the floor. The female student glanced up, looking genuinely uncertain of what had just happened, while the male student, presumably realizing that things had not gone according to plan—particularly as I was staring right at him—held my gaze and kept walking, as if nothing had happened. He left the room, and I let him go.

Naturally, my first thought was that the male student was attempting to help the female student cheat. I assumed that the folded-up sheet of paper would include an answer to one or more of the test questions. My only confusion was that the female student didn’t appear to anticipate receiving the piece of paper, nor did she seem at all concerned about the paper lying less than two feet from her desk. She did not appear desirous to get it into her hands, nor did she appear anxious that I might come forward and pick up the piece of paper. I went forward and picked up the piece of paper.

What I discovered was not an attempt at cheating at all … unless, perhaps, the male student is already in a committed relationship. Instead, the note was nothing more than the male student’s attempt at expressing terms of endearment to a girl who had smitten him. I felt kind of guilty keeping the note, but I didn’t feel it was appropriate for me to deliver it, being in a position of authority and all. (It seems to cross a boundary.) And yet I hate to see a love letter go to waste. And so, I’ll now share it with you. Here is a scan of the very note I picked up:

Regrettably, the female student may never know this about herself. And who knows, she may have looked at herself in the mirror that very morning and wondered if she fit this description, and wondered if any guy was ever going to think this of her or tell her this. For all I know, the male student could have been her soul mate, and this note could have been the beginning of a beautiful relationship.

Who says romance is dead?

Disney Pictures

2011-03-16T15:00:00.005-04:00

As promised, I now present pictures from our recent trip to Disney World. The first half comes from day one, when we visited Disney’s Magic Kingdom. The second half is from day two, when we visited Disney’s Animal Kingdom. Melanie already posted most of these on her blog, but I’ll be filling in a few more details about the trip as I discuss the photos, so hopefully that’s worth something.

Edison and Peter were both pretty excited about riding a shuttle. At first, Edison thought we were joking about taking a shuttle, because he was thinking of a space shuttle. When we explained that it was like a bus, he became very excited about it. As we talked about whether to shuttle or not, Edison was a strong advocate for the position that we should indeed take the shuttle. He won.

You’ll also notice in the above picture that Edison and Peter are wearing jackets. Yes, it was rather chilly on that first day, at least in the morning and evening. We wore the jackets for at least a few hours, I think, before it became too warm.

This is the one and only photo I’ll share that was taken from inside the Magic Kingdom park. The others that we took within the park are near duplicates of this one, so there isn’t anything else worth sharing. If you’ve seen Melanie’s blog, note that this photo is slightly different from the one she shared. Peter’s face is obscured in this one, which isn’t cute, but I feel the photo has strengths that the one Melanie shared did not. For instance, notice the man just behind Edison’s left shoulder. He has provided us with photographic proof that Creegan’s bowels are working just fine nowadays.

This is Eddie and Peter, having just departed the monorail (still visible on the left side of the photo) after our return to Epcot. We had to wait just outside of Epcot for our return shuttle to the hotel. With plenty of time to spare, we hung around and snapped some pictures. The sun was setting and turned the sky into a lovely shade of purple, not quite captured by this photo, but close. Edison and Peter both loved the “big ball.” I myself thought the ball looked a lot cooler in real life than it ever has in photos. It’s a lot sleeker than you’d think—very shiny and metallic.

My date to Disney World. She’s married and has kids, but hey, so do I. As you can see, Creegan eventually passed out from his own stench. We probably should have taken diapers to Orlando, but we knew any time spent changing diapers meant less time on rides. I think we made the right choice. You can change diapers any day of the week, but you can’t always ride Aladdin’s magic carpets, am I right?

For being such a spirited pirate, Eddie was deathly afraid of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride and refused to let us go on it. We tried to stuff him into a rentable locker so the rest of us could go on the ride, but he didn’t quite fit. What a killjoy. Fortunately, as we waited for the shuttle back to our hotel after our first day at Disney World, the woman working in the nearby “Bus Information” booth found our boys charming, called them over, and gave them both a free pirate hat. So, we did have some pirate-oriented fun for the day. And, as a bonus, I’m thinking that if Edison and Peter grow up and pirate Disney movies for a living, we’ll only have Disney to blame. I can just imagine Eddie and Peter’s defense lawyer whipping out these pirate hats as exhibit A. Oh, the egg on the Disney executives’ faces! Why, Daisy Duck herself couldn’t poop out that much egg in a lifetime!

Here begins day two, with this picture being snapped at Disney’s Animal Kingdom. More specifically, it was taken aboard the Kilimanjaro Safaris ride, about 20 seconds before the ride came to an end. I like the blurred background, showing just how wild a ride it was. (Well, mildly wild, at least for a few seconds, here and there.) We were seated directly behind the driver of the jeep, which gave us the advantage of having a nearly unobstructed view out the front windshield, as well as to our sides. I don’t know if being up front and seeing so well in front of us made it better or worse for Peter, who was a bit scared on this ride. It could get quite bumpy, and sometimes we did go kind of fast. I’m fairly certain this is the only ride that Peter asked to get off of, and he did so repeatedly. Poor guy. All in all, he handled it quite well, considering how much he wanted to be done with it. I think he may have cried for a few seconds at some point, but otherwise, he was just tense. Brave little fella.

Just as Sleeping Beauty’s Castle is the center of the Magic Kingdom, the Tree of Life is the center of Animal Kingdom. You probably cannot tell from this photograph alone just how impressive this fake tree is. It’s 50 feet wide and 14 stories tall, with animals intricately carved all around the trunk. (You might want to click on the picture and view it at a larger size in order to better appreciate it.) This photo was taken from almost directly beneath the tree, so you don’t see the details nearly as well as you could otherwise. The It’s Tough to be a Bug! 3-D movie that concluded our visit to Animal Kingdom is shown in a theater located underneath the tree, purposely designed to feel as though you are inside the root of the tree (like you yourself are a bug). I snapped this picture just after watching the movie.

I snapped this photo less than one minute after taking the previous picture. It was getting dark quickly at this point, so it’s rather difficult to see that the Tree of Life is right behind the three kids that suddenly stuck their faces in front of my camera as I was taking pictures. I basically had to lie down on the ground to get this shot. The effort doesn’t show, so I have to mention it. Why? Because I think I deserve recognition whenever I do anything that requires more than sitting, standing, or walking, that’s why.

Show’s over! Thanks for watching!

Animal Kingdom

2011-03-14T19:59:00.003-04:00

In my previous entry, I discussed the first day of our family vacation to Disney World. We visited the Magic Kingdom, but it was less than magical. Day two was much better, in large part because we decided not to return to Magic Kingdom and instead to visit Disney’s Animal Kingdom. The benefits of visiting Animal Kingdom were numerous. First, the crowds were drastically smaller than at Magic Kingdom. Second, getting to Animal Kingdom involved a much simpler transportation process. Rather than shuttling to Epcot, taking the monorail to the transportation and parking center, and then taking a ferryboat to Magic Kingdom, all of which took an exorbitant amount of time, we could just shuttle to Epcot and then hop on a bus straight to Animal Kingdom. Knowing it would be so much simpler, we opted again to use the shuttle. It worked out beautifully. After getting to Epcot, we headed over to a relatively short line for the Animal Kingdom bus, and within a few minutes, were on our way to Animal Kingdom. Whereas it took a full two-and-a-half hours to get inside the Magic Kingdom once we boarded the shuttle on Monday, we entered the gates of Animal Kingdom approximately one hour after boarding the same shuttle on Tuesday. Beautiful.

Seconds after walking into Animal Kingdom, I knew I preferred it to Magic Kingdom, transportation issues aside. The density of the crowd was less than half of what it was at Magic Kingdom. You could walk around without lewdly pressing into complete strangers. It was much shadier, with lots of plant life. And overall, it was more educational and museum-like, which I liked. Our first destination was the part of Animal Kingdom dubbed Dinoland, U.S.A. Eddie and Peter both like dinosaurs, so we assumed it would be a hit. In the end, we didn’t do much that was dinosaur related, but I think Eddie and Peter had the most fun they had had on the trip yet. We started off at a playland area that is designed to look like an excavation site. True, you can find a playland at your local McDonald’s and skip a trip to Disney World, but we didn’t mind spending some time there. It’s something kids love, so why not?

After playing in the playland for a while and then spending some time digging up bones in a sandpit, we headed to a nearby auditorium to watch the live-action, condensed, 30-minute, musical version of Finding Nemo. It was actually quite impressive, and I think the kids were quite taken in by the imagery of it all. Edison got a little nervous when some actors came running through the crowd with some giant jellyfish attached to poles, making it look as though the jellyfish were swimming around over our heads, but his fear was quickly dissipated when Melanie assured him they were fake.

After watching the show, we took toward the part of Animal Kingdom dubbed Asia. Eddie and Peter (and, admittedly, Melanie and I) enjoyed stopping and watching the “Expedition Everest” roller coaster. Melanie really wanted to go on it, but seeing as how she’d have to go on it alone, she didn’t. Admittedly, I’m glad I didn’t have to take care of all three kids by myself for however long the wait would have been, but I wish Melanie had been able to try some of the things that interested her. (Someday, honey!) We moseyed through Asia and wound up in Africa, where we had some traditional African cuisine—cheeseburgers, a turkey sandwich on focaccia, potato chips, lemonade, a chocolate shake, and a Diet Coke. We then went on the coolest ride we had yet been on (in my opinion), the Kilimanjaro Safaris. Melanie took Edison on an emergency bathroom trip right when we were almost to the front of line (not that we knew that), so I ended up standing there awkwardly with Creegan and Peter as a bajillion people pressed past me and I tried to keep my place at the very front of the line. Fortunately, Melanie and Edison didn’t take too terribly long. We then boarded a jeep and drove around in the “wild,” looking at zebras, lions, ostriches, warthogs, giraffes, alligators, rhinos, and the like. There were no barriers whatsoever between us and many of the animals. In fact, one of the rhinos was so close that Edison probably could have touched it had he put his arm out. It was cool. I regret not snapping some pictures before the ride was basically over, but it was often very bumpy and I consciously decided not to try taking out the camera. I eventually did take out the camera, but then the driver announced that the ride was over. Poop.

From Africa, we traveled via train (choo-choo style, not a monorail or anything—the train was so desolate that we got a large train car all to ourselves!) to a place called Rafiki’s Planet Watch area. They had a petting zoo we wanted to see, but it ended up being quite lame. I don’t know if they didn’t have all the animals available that they normally do, but it was very underwhelming. There were about a dozen goats huddled together, and that was about it. Those were the only animals you could actually get to, and they spent a good deal of time in an area where you couldn’t reach them, on what appeared to be a playland of their own. We didn’t stay there very long. We then went into a museum and spent some time in there. It wasn’t anything special, but it was fun for a few minutes. Edison and Peter enjoyed looking at the various bugs and snakes, and they even got to pet a lizard, which was cool. We then stopped for another cool treat (a strawberry popsicle and a frozen banana) before heading back to the train.

Once aboard the train, they announced that it was going on 6 p.m., and that as such, most of Animal Kingdom would be closed. Only a few select areas of the park would remain open until 8 p.m. We hadn’t expected this, so we weren’t sure what to do. We had planned on going to see the 8-minute, 3-D movie called It’s Tough to be a Bug!, but this didn’t technically fall into the list of areas and attractions that were staying open late. Even so, we knew we had to pass by the auditorium showing the movie in order to exit the park, so we headed that way. We figured that, if nothing else, we could return to Dinoland for a few minutes, since it was one of the areas staying open late. Well, serendipitously enough, as we were walking past the bug movie, an usher (or whatever) was standing out front and telling people that they could head right in for a show that was about to start, no waiting necessary. “Perfect!” we thought, and headed right in. There ended up being more of a wait for the movie to begin than we had been led to believe, but we were basically in front of the line. After several minutes, we filed into the theater and donned our glasses. Sadly, it went a bit downhill from there. The movie was rather loud and intense, so Peter and Eddie, neither of whom wanted to wear their glasses (at least not for long), were a bit terrified by it. Melanie hated it too, not only because it ended up being nothing more than a hectic assault on the senses (you get sprayed with water, a stench is filtered through the air when a stink bug farts onscreen, animatronic spiders drop down from the ceiling, air blows in your face when things pop out at you from the screen, the bottom of your seat wiggles when bugs are supposed to be crawling underneath you, etc.), but because she felt so powerless to help Peter. (Peter was sitting on the opposite side of Melanie than I was, so I couldn’t really get to him. Plus, Edison was in between Melanie and me.) As for myself, I would have enjoyed it were I not essentially immune to 3-D. I’ve written about this in the past (see here), but I wasn’t able to overcome it this time. I was never really able to focus on the 3-D images. They were all blurry, which makes the whole experience rather pointless. Still, I guess it’s fair to say that I enjoyed it more than anyone else in my family.

Once the movie was over, it was time to head out and bus back to Epcot so we could get on the shuttle back to our hotel. Our timing was much more perfect this time around, so we didn’t have to wait too terribly long for the bus or for the shuttle. It was nice. And the whole experience overall was quite nice. In the end, I suppose we didn’t see a lot more than we did at Magic Kingdom, but it was a much calmer experience, and we didn’t have to fight so hard to accomplish what we did. It was a much more leisurely experience all around.

We’ve still got two days left on our tickets, so we’ll be returning to Disney World sometime within the next four to eight weeks. As I said in my last entry, we will return to Magic Kingdom and hope to hit some of the things we missed, though I’m semi-reluctant about that. As for the other day left on our tickets, we currently plan to check out Epcot. I’m actually really excited about Epcot. From what I’ve seen online, I think it could easily prove to be my favorite park. Pretty much every attraction they have is something I am interested in seeing. Part of me fears that once I see Epcot, I’ll wish we had another day to visit it, that I won’t have time to see everything I want to see there in just one day. Then I’ll feel even sadder about how disappointed we were with our first day at the Magic Kingdom. But oh well. Not much I can do about that, I suppose. The next time I post, I plan on putting up some pictures, which in turn will allow me to share a few more details about the trip. Until then….

The Happiest Living Hell on Earth

2011-03-10T11:57:00.009-05:00

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

It was a Disney World family vacation.

For a short while now, Melanie and I have been discussing the possibility of going on a family vacation to Disney World. As Florida residents, we’re eligible for discounts that make such a grand vacation relatively feasible. This is especially true given that Peter and Creegan are still young enough to get into the Disney World parks for free. With this week being spring break, we had considered booking a hotel and going down for a few days, but we never quite committed to the plan because, among other things, we weren’t sure how reliable our van would be. As last week drew to a close and spring break officially began (for me, that would have been last Thursday at about 2 p.m.), we continued batting the idea around, changing our mind about 1,000 times over a two-day period. Things were slightly complicated by the fact that some good friends of ours wanted us to go down with them sometime next month. We wanted to buy a four-day pass to Disney World (where each of the four days can be used at any point between now and the end of May), but we weren’t sure if we should try to drive down there more than once or if we should just try to cram it all into one super vacation. The former option would make it easier to fit in with school and spread out the fun, but it would ultimately cost more for gas and hotels. The latter option would be cheaper, but perhaps more grueling physically and psychologically, plus difficult to arrange with school.

Early on Saturday evening, Melanie and I had decided that we would try to go down only once, and that we would wait until next month so we could go with our friends. We gave up on the idea of driving down to Orlando on Monday or Tuesday, as we had been considering. Then, quite late on Saturday night, Melanie and I got about as spontaneous as we’ve ever been and decided that not only would we still go this week, but we would leave the very next day, on Sunday afternoon. We had never considered leaving that early in the week, but quite simply, we had been wanting to do something fun during spring break and we figured why not just do it. So we did. The next day, just after 4 p.m., we took off for Orlando, telling Eddie and Peter only a few hours before that we were going on vacation. It was quite fun.

The fun lasted up until about the time we actually got to Disney World on Monday morning. As Melanie so graciously and frequently reminds me, attitude plays a big role in how positively or negatively one’s experiences are. But let me tell you, it was hard to enjoy that first day at Disney’s Magic Kingdom. We stayed at a hotel located just two miles (literally) from Disney World, a hotel that offered a complimentary shuttle to the park. (This was a huge perk, we thought, given that parking at Disney World is $14 per day.) We took the 10:05 a.m. shuttle that picked us up right in front of our hotel. It would be two-and-a-half hours before we were actually inside the Magic Kingdom. Why? Well, as it turns out, the shuttle only takes you to Epcot, from which you must utilize the complimentary Disney transportation systems to work your way to Magic Kingdom (or to any of the other Disney parks). That sounds all well and good, but it was an incredibly laborious experience. First, after departing our shuttle, we had to walk quite a ways to get to the actual entrance to Epcot. Then we had to wait in an incredibly long line to have our bags searched. Then we had to wait in line for the monorail, which takes you not to the Magic Kingdom itself, but to the parking and transportation center. Once you get to the parking and transportation center, you must either take another monorail (which has another huge line) or take a ferryboat to get to the Magic Kingdom. Getting off of the first monorail, there were about a million people milling around. You couldn’t tell which way to go. You could see signs above the monorail and ferryboat loading areas, but you had no clue what lines were going to get you to those things. Nobody was standing around guiding people. It was pandemonium, as far as I could tell. We wanted to try the ferryboats, just to have a change of pace. We tried moving away from the line that seemed to be directly in front of the monorail boarding system. But, as we moved further and further down the line, it didn’t seem like there was ever a new line. It all seemed to be one massive group. We didn’t know what we were doing, but fortunately for us, we somehow ended up back in the line, further up than we probably were supposed to be. We kind of just blended into it. I don’t feel that guilty about it, because the line was totally disorganized and tons of people kept ending up ahead of you that weren’t originally ahead of you. Rather than being a single-file line, the line was about ten people wide, so you couldn’t tell who was with whom and where they were going, exactly. Gaps would open up several feet to your right and a few feet ahead of you, and suddenly someone from a mile back behind you in line would fill that void. It was quite chaotic.

In the end, we thought we had fallen back into the original line that we had been trying to avoid, which we originally thought was for the monorail. It ended up being for the ferryboat (which made us happy, I guess), but it was as long or longer waiting for the ferryboat as it ever was waiting to go on a ride at the Magic Kingdom itself. Once we actually got on the ferryboat and to the Magic Kingdom’s main entrance, we had to go through another line for a repeat bag search. Then we had to go get in line at the ticket will call office, to pick up the passes we had ordered online. By the time we had those tickets and had officially passed through the turnstiles at the Magic Kingdom’s main entrance, it was after 12:30 p.m.

Let the fun begin? No, not quite. We knew we wanted to hit Adventureland first, but we had barely gotten into the park and walked a few feet before we were abruptly stopped and told we had to wait for a parade. We had to stand there for about ten minutes while a collection of dancers and half a dozen or so familiar Disney characters on floats went by. We weren’t really interested in the parade, so it felt like nothing more than yet another delay. As it would turn out, the non-stop parades would prove one of our worst enemies on the trip, hindering our progression through the park at several points. In fact, between the time we officially entered the Magic Kingdom (approximately 12:35 p.m.) and the time we boarded the complimentary shuttle back to the hotel (7:45 p.m.), we enjoyed a total of five attractions. Only three of those were rides, and one of the non-rides (the Swiss Family Robinson Tree House) we didn’t even have to wait in line for. Is that obscene or what? I think so.

Admittedly, the poor use of our time was partially our own fault. Then again, there was no way to know we were doing things stupidly. You have to go through all the craziness of visiting Disney World before you learn how to do it much better. By then, it’s too late to gain back the hours that were arguably wasted. For one thing, you’ve got to avoid going back and forth. We were trying to be smart when, for instance, we grabbed a “Fast Pass” ticket for the Jungle Cruise ride. Fast Pass tickets give you a pre-printed one-hour window during which you can return to the respective ride and board it almost immediately, without waiting in line. It worked great, except that we basically spent the time between getting the Fast Pass ticket and actually riding the ride (over 90 minutes later) walking across the park and back without doing a dang thing other than eating a $4.29 corn dog. (We passed on the $3, one-ounce bag of potato chips. No joke.) After eating lunch, we thought we’d pass the time by heading to the Haunted Mansion. On our way there … whoops, it’s another parade! Road closed! Oh good, this nice Disney employee is guiding us into the closed-off area and telling us to go ahead. Wait, what’s this? Now another Disney employee is mad at us and telling us we’ve got to get out of the road we were just directed into. He points us over to the other side of the road, onto a sidewalk that is packed with people eagerly awaiting the parade. We can hardly get through them, what with a baby stroller and all. The Disney employee has to yell at people to move for us, and even then, there is barely room at the back of the crowd of spectators for a single-file (at best) line of people to walk in one direction. People are indeed walking, but not in the direction we’re trying to go. Thankfully, after a few minutes of trying to push our stroller upstream, we are directed to a closed sidewalk along with a person in a wheelchair. We bypass a massive amount of people this way, but it doesn’t get us terribly far. We see that the Haunted Mansion wait time is 40 minutes. I’m tempted, and Edison is convinced he wants to go in it, but I’m also 99.9% certain he’ll back out at the last moment. I don’t want to invest 40 minutes into that. So, we decide to work our way to Fantasyland and see about doing the Peter Pan ride. Unfortunately, this requires a little bit of backtracking, too. When we get to the Peter Pan ride, the wait time is an hour. At this point, we only have a few minutes before we can use our Fast Pass for the Jungle Cruise (way back in the Adventureland area of the park). We decide to grab a Fast Pass for the Peter Pan ride, since it is offered. We don’t notice until the Fast Pass tickets print that the return time is 9:20 p.m. Um, never mind. Scratch Peter Pan off the list. Let’s go back to the Jungle Cruise.

Way too long later, we are back at the Jungle Cruise ride. We get onto it fairly quickly, which is really, really nice. The ride doesn’t last long and is a bit different from what I remember as a kid. They have changed it, and it doesn’t seem much worth the time, really. We decide to make our way to Tomorrowland, which we still haven’t visited. Finally, we have some decent fun. We wait in line to go on the Astro Orbiter, which is basically flying rockets that you can make go up and down. Peter goes with me and is a bit freaked out. (The centrifugal force makes you feel like your rocket is about to tip over.) I try to calm him by pretending we’re birds. Melanie, Creegan, and Eddie are in the rocket in front of us. Eddie, too, doesn’t want to make the rocket go up and down, but after the ride is done, he hails it as his favorite activity of the day. Both boys may have been hesitant about making the rockets go up and down because of an earlier experience that day, on Aladdin’s magic carpet ride. The two rides are similar, in that you basically fly around in circles and can make your vehicle go up and down. Eddie made the magic carpet go up and down a few times, but it was more abrupt than expected and it freaked both him and (even more so) Peter out.

What have I left out? Oh, we visited a Monsters, Inc. show, which was basically stand-up comedy performed by cartoon monsters on-screen. It wasn’t exactly a movie, because they would actually put people from the audience up on a big screen and have the on-screen cartoon monsters interact with them a bit. Clearly, people were backstage with a microphone and making up some of the stuff on the spot as they talked to the people in the audience. But it was still a cartoon, not people in costumes or anything. It was mildly entertaining, though probably not the most exciting thing for Edison and Peter. Eddie laughed a few times, though I think he was laughing more because he could tell a joke was told than because he understood the joke.

At that point, we thought we had better start heading back to the monorail so we could work our way back to the shuttle pick-up area. We had no idea how long it would take going back the other way, so we ended up back a lot earlier than we needed to be, unfortunately. Still, I don’t know that we would have had much time for anything else. As the day progressed, the wait times seemed to increase at each ride. I’m a bit disappointed that we didn’t go on any rides that involve watching stuff, like the Peter Pan ride, Pirates of the Caribbean (which Eddie refused to go on because he was certain it would be terrifying), the Haunted Mansion, or even It’s a Small World. Those types of rides are what stand out in my memory from visiting Disneyland as a kid. The good news (or is it?) is that we plan to return to the Magic Kingdom next month. We’ll do things much better next time, including shelling out the $14 to park at the park ourselves. I’m sure this will be hectic, too, but at least we won’t have to work around shuttle schedules. We’ll also have a good idea of exactly what we want to do, and we’ll head straight to it, starting on the opposite side of the park than we did this time around. I’m hopeful that it can be a much, much better experience.

Later, I’ll write about our second full day in Orlando, during which we spent the day at Disney’s Animal Kingdom. That was a much nicer experience. I’ll also post some pictures, though we kept with tradition and hardly took any photographs.

The Space Between

2011-02-27T11:51:00.000-05:00

Every once in a while, as I lie in bed trying to sleep, I drift off to that special place in between wakefulness and dreaming. Often when I haplessly mosey into this murky territory, my thoughts turn into a string of ludicrous non-sequiturs that would do Lewis Carroll proud. Now and then, however, rather than going cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, I think all but my logical side shuts down. There have been a few times when, as I linger in somnolent limbo, I am struck by what I regard as profound insights. Usually, it’s when I’m pondering something to do with philosophy, and then as I lapse into semi-sleep, I find that my logical brain carries on without me, almost automatically, and it sees connections or makes inferences that are rather astonishing. In many ways, I feel like I’m just listening to my brain as it computes things and spits out the results. I’m very much an observer, or so it seems. Unfortunately, because I’m delicately balanced on the precipice of sleep whenever this occurs, the insights are typically lost. Even if I were to try to wake myself enough to grab a pen and paper and jot down the brilliance with which I’ve just been inspired, to do so would almost certainly cause me to lose hold of the ingenious thoughts. By the time I scrambled to the surface, reverse-plunged my head back into the warm air of full-blooded consciousness, and gulped the air of lucidity back into my mental lungs, I’d find the deep thoughts I was trying so desperately to preserve had long since slipped through my fingertips and sunk back into the deepest recesses of my mind, never again to be recovered. What a crapper.

Last night, I had no such brilliant thoughts, but I was entertained by my semi-conscious thought processes. Not quite a riddle, not quite a deep thought, I came up with this little gem:

“Round” turns five words into six.

There’s something hauntingly beautiful about it, don’t you think? I was also treated to a half-dream in which I was driving around in a parking garage in Seattle. At some point, some guy tried to get into my car when I was going kind of slow. It was kind of creepy, and I thought I should circle around and crush him by pinning him between the hood of my car and the wall. But then I was disturbed, thinking that if I pinned him hard and punched the gas just a little bit, to make sure the pressure killed him, his insides would probably start shooting out of his mouth and all over the windshield. Pretty silly, eh? LOL!

Potpourri No. 30

2011-02-17T13:18:00.001-05:00

Random tidbits o’ life:

Ah, Summer
It’s February in Florida, which means the first signs of summer are upon us. As in years past, the shortest month in the calendar has given rise to the first sunbathers by the pool. Lately, I myself have been wearing t-shirts and shorts and driving with the A/C on. It’s uncomfortable not to, which sucks considering we’ve got about six months of steadily increasing temperatures to look forward to. Currently, afternoon temperatures have been reaching into the high 70’s, and tomorrow it’s supposed to top out at 79 degrees. Crazy!

So What Else is New?
Guess who’s sick? Trick question! The real question, of course and as always, is who’s the sickest? That’s a tough one right now. Melanie’s just starting to get over something terrible, and I think I might just be descending into it. In a family of five, it seems impossible to fully exorcise illness from the home, which sucks a donkey. I somehow thought I might scrape by this round with barely a scratch—or scratchy throat, I should say. My throat had been sore and swollen for a few days, but nothing major. It seemed to be getting better, but last night, my throat suddenly feels like it’s coated in sand. It’s not sore again, but it’s obnoxious and I’m occasionally seized with coughing fits that leave me seeing stars and tasting blood. I assume it’s salt and not blood, but I always think of blood when I’m hacking my lungs out and get that distinct flavor in my mouth. It would have to be snot, methinks. Or, maybe I’ve just got tuberculosis! LOL!

Taking Teaching to a Whole New Level
Some exciting (dreadful?) news this week: I’ve been given a teaching position for the latter part of the summer semester. That means I’ll have full responsibility of a class, the first time in several years that this has been the case. During my time at Georgia State, I taught seven classes completely on my own. But my teaching gig this summer will be quite different. First of all, I’ll have as much control over the course as a genuine professor would. At GSU, we grad students didn’t have much say over anything other than what work-appropriate clothes we wore while we taught. The syllabus, textbook, lesson schedule, exams, etc., were all selected and written for us. Very little was left up to us. At FSU, I’ll be calling the shots. That’s cool, but it’s also a lot more responsibility and work on my part, so I’m sure it will be stressful. But, funny enough, I think I’ll have a TA of my own to help me out. Wow, I’m growing up! But anyway, another huge difference between my time at GSU and my upcoming teaching gig is that I’ve now been assigned to teach a 3000-level class. A symbolic logic class, no less. Reductio ad absurdum! Symbolic logic is not my specialty, by any means, but I guess that’s beside the point as far as the department is concerned. It’s assumed that I know the material at this stage of the game, and of course, I do. I’ve taken symbolic logic twice, after all. (“I’ve been going to this high school for seven and a half years. I’m no dummy!”) I took it at the U of U even though I didn’t have to, and then I had to take it as part of my master’s program at GSU. I always kind of liked the subject and did exceptionally well with it, but it’s also one of the most intimidating subjects I’ve ever studied. It can easily confuse people, and I’m not excluded from that. I often have to think through matters of symbolic logic very slowly, and I can’t help wondering how inept I might sometimes appear to my students this summer. But that’s OK. It should be quite an experience teaching the class. An overwhelming but interesting and good experience.

It’s Official—I’m a Twit
Yup, I’ve made a Twitter account. Why? Why ask why? No reason, really. I decided to follow a bunch of celebrities just for the heck of it, and also because most of them excel at being witty in 140-characters or fewer. (Bam! Bet you thought I’d say “less”!) Probably everything I put on Twitter I’ll also put as a status update on Facebook, but in my experience, Facebook status updates are much easier to miss. One reason is the fact that Facebook friendships are practically meaningless, so people have way more Facebook friends than they could ever keep up with. Another reason is that status updates on Facebook have to compete with updates about someone’s horse dying on Farmtown or with the results of someone's survey to determine what kind of legume best captures their personality. (You are a garbanzo bean, but your besties call you chick pea!) On Twitter, depending on whom you follow, you’re not getting so much excess baggage and fluff. That’s nice … even if it is pointless.

Two-Line Poetry
While walking home from the bus stop the other day, I thought maybe I should start writing simple, two-line poems. It would give me a chance to be more artsy without demanding too much of my time. And, as we’ve all learned from haikus, short and simple can be truly beautiful, just like Dudley Moore. So, anyway, I came up with these gems. Hope you enjoy them!

TURTLE SOUP
Suntan while you can, little turtle
For tonight, it’s turtle soup

SILENT REJECTION
I thought she’d never ask
Turns out I was right

The end!

Gettin' Baked

2011-02-09T13:46:00.002-05:00

Warning: this post is bi-polar. The next paragraph has basically nothing to do with the one that follows it. It is the second paragraph below that is the real subject of this post.

Sitting down to write this entry, I am torn between writing about the ceaseless stresses that come with being a relatively poor, married, graduate student father and discussing something much less gloomy. Suffice it to say, the more people in your family, the more often something is wrong. I dare say, this has been the most stressful, and at times dreary and depressing, my life has felt in several years. I’m not in a constant state of sadness or anything, but I’ve felt more despair since Creegan was born than I’d care to admit. Good thing he’s a cutie. It’s not like it’s him causing the problems, anyway, at least not specifically. It’s just that he’s one more person in the equation. Our resources—emotional, psychological, and physical alike—are further tapped. Add that to the endless supply of demands that are upon you—familial demands, professional and academic demands, even personal-development demands—and it’s rough, especially when someone is always sick, an errand always needs to be run, a meal always needs to be made, a van always needs to be taken into the repair shop, an essay always needs to be written, a test always needs to be graded, a call always needs to be made—to the apartment maintenance staff because something’s falling apart, to the hospital billing department because they can’t figure out my insurance, etc. It never ends. I don’t know how Melanie does everything she does, and she does a lot. But as a family of five, it’s harder and harder for demands not to impinge on everyone, and I sometimes don’t know if I can take the stress and/or blah of it all.

OK, I guess I had to get some of that off my chest. You’d never guess that I had decided not to write about stress, would you? I actually chose to write about something happier. And what’s that, you ask? One of my favorite food discoveries of the past year—baked chips. Two or three months ago, Melanie and I were at some friends’ house for a barbecue, and they served Baked Cheddar & Sour Cream Ruffles® to go with their burgers. I’ve tried baked chips before, but I didn’t remember caring for them all that much. However, Cheddar & Sour Cream Ruffles have long been one of my favorite kinds of chip, so I thought I’d try out the baked variety. To my surprise, I found that I liked them even more than the “normal” kind. I’ve since tried other baked chips from Frito-Lay, including Baked Doritos®, and I find them all surprisingly good. With the exception of Doritos, I genuinely like the baked versions better. That’s happy news for my health, since a serving of baked chips has roughly one-third the amount of saturated fat that the “normal” chips have. If you’ve been following my blog, you know that reducing my saturated fats seems to be having a positive effect on my weight. The cool thing is, even if the “normal” and the baked varieties of chips were equally good (or bad) for you, I would opt for the baked versions almost every time. They really do taste better. (Bear in mind, I’m the kind of person that also thinks French fries, McDonald’s hash browns, and the like taste better if you squeeze them really hard with a napkin first and get rid of a lot of the grease. I’ve been like that for years, so it’s not merely a change in my diet that has prompted me to enjoy the less greasy version of chips. I like the more natural taste.) On the downside, baked chips are a lot more expensive. If I remember correctly, a bag of baked chips is at least dollar more than “normal” chips, and I don’t think you get as much. Depending on how much you eat chips, switching to baked chips could be expensive. Of course, if you eat them very frequently, you’ll be much better off switching to the baked variety.

Walkman

2011-02-02T11:28:00.002-05:00

After I ate breakfast and showered this morning, I set my wet and naked body (sorry for the unnecessary erotica!) on the bathroom scale. It is a digital scale that measures to the nearest 1/10 pound. According to this morning’s measurement, I weigh 18.6 pounds less than I did at my mid-December doctor’s appointment. That’s encouraging, because during the week between Christmas and New Year’s (and probably for a few days afterward), I wasn’t very disciplined at all, and up until two days ago, I hadn’t tried adding exercise to my routine. All I did was boost my fiber intake—which on a typical day is now around 30 or more grams per day—and watch my saturated fats. I was encouraged to watch my carbs, too, but I haven’t been as concerned with that. I tracked them for a while, but generally, the kinds of foods that would throw off my carbs were also the kinds of things that would throw off my saturated fats—most notably, baked treats and sweets. Of course, I eliminated regular soda from my diet, which itself probably reduced my average daily carb intake by the hundreds. Other than that, I look at carbs only secondarily, to break ties between which brands of tortillas and bread I should buy, for example.

As noted above, I did start exercising two days ago. Nothing major. I’m going for walks, and right now, I don’t even plan to go for walks on days when I go to school because I walk around a bit on campus anyway. I’m open to increasing this, but for now, I figure this can only help matters. Thus far, then, I’ve only gone on two official walks. That hardly warrants any commentary on my part, but I enjoyed them. And I think I will enjoy them. This morning, it was crisp and cool and a bit gray from the early morning rain. It’s nice to get out there and just walk, enjoying the scenery but also being able to be so in tune with one’s own thoughts. Having an iPod is wonderful for this. (You can’t help but turn introspective when you’ve got music playing right inside your ear canals, blocking out much of the noise from the outside world.) Many years ago, I used to walk on a treadmill and use a Discman. That was clunky, awkward, and the Discman was prone to skip as you would walk. Needless to say, iPods are a tremendous improvement. I love it. And it’s so much easier to exercise when you’ve got John Parr’s “St. Elmo’s Fire” blasting away in your eardrums. (I just wish I had had a banana yellow sweatband and some electric blue running shorts to make me feel even more inspired.) I can imagine myself wanting to go on daily walks for the rest of my life. The major hurdle, of course, is going to be weather. In a very short time, it will be disastrously hot around here, even early in the morning. What a way to ruin a good thing.

I guess that’s all I have to say. I thought there would be more to it, but apparently not. Okay, then.

Circumcision

2011-01-27T16:25:00.003-05:00

I grew up assuming I would have my male children circumcised. This was not for religious purposes. And it’s not because I was taught in any explicit way that I should have my male children circumcised. It’s just that having your male children circumcised was, so I thought, the norm. It’s what most people do. So, I would do it too. Not because I gave it a lot of thought and decided that it made the most sense, but because it was a procedure as routine and expected (so I believed) as cutting the umbilical cord. If you had asked me as a teenager if I would have my future male children circumcised, I would have answered “yes” as automatically and with as little thought as if you had asked me what 2 + 2 equals.

I don’t remember Melanie and me having that much of a discussion concerning whether or not to circumcise Eddie and Peter. We discussed it some, but I don’t remember it being a weighty issue for us. With Creegan, we felt a little less certain. Melanie thought it seemed like a terrible thing to subject our baby to, and it was hard to think up any good justifiable reasons for having it done. Sure enough, our main reason for thinking we should have Creegan circumcised was the superficial fact that if we didn’t have him circumcised, he would be different from most other males, including but not limited to his older brothers.

Melanie and I decided to have Creegan circumcised. After the circumcision was performed, Melanie spoke to a doctor who made her feel a lot better about our decision. He strongly endorsed male circumcision and told Melanie various reasons that it would prove beneficial to our son. Obviously, we would not have had Creegan circumcised if we were that leery of it, but it was still nice to have a doctor applauding our decision.

A few minutes ago, I watched a video someone (I don’t remember whom) posted on Facebook. For the first minute or so of the video, I was highly enjoying it as a philosopher, with the narrator picking apart the shoddy (and dare I say duplicitous) line of reasoning employed by certain medical professionals. As the video went on, however, I found myself gripped by the issue at debate—male circumcision, as you can probably guess. I found the video very powerful and very persuasive, so much so that I really hope anyone reading this will invest 15 minutes into watching it. I feel strongly about this and hope people really will watch it. I’m hoping people watch it not because I want them to oppose male circumcision—I have a hard time completely ruling it out, even now—but because the video highlights how foolish we can be about certain things. We all too often make big decisions for stupid reasons, and we too often think too little for ourselves. The video gives us a real-life example of how lazy thinking is literally dangerous. Appeals to tradition do not justify atrocities. Not liking what other people say is not a reason to dismiss what they say, especially when you honestly can’t give an adequate response to their very well thought-out and very reasonable arguments. I’m not saying that male circumcision is an atrocity—but maybe it is, and I’m willing to ponder on it. I consider that part of being a responsible human being. Being willing to give matters due consideration is what led me from being a staunch denier of giving my organs away after I die to being a firm advocate that we should all be organ donors. How can you possibly defend a willing decision not to let your organs save lives after you’re dead?

But I digress. I’ve posted the video about male circumcision below. I implore you all to watch. There are no disturbing graphics or images to worry about, so don’t fear it. Fear only ignorance.

Dew or Dew Not ...

2011-01-19T16:26:00.001-05:00

… there is no try.

Back when I was living in Atlanta, I tried a variety of Mountain Dew knock-offs. Nothing came close to matching the exquisite flavor of the real deal, but some were much better than others. I was long ago going to write a comparative review of these products, put it up on my blog, and give it the title that I’ve now given this post. But despite keeping the title, this post is not about Mountain Dew knock-offs in the strictest sense, it’s about Diet Mountain Dew—the good, the bad, and the ugly of it.

As many of you know, I recently stopped drinking regular sodas except on very rare occasions. So far, I’ve been quite a fan of Coke Zero, Cherry Coke Zero, and Diet Dr. Pepper. These are the best-tasting diet sodas that I’ve been able to find, and it has been very easy to transition over to drinking them. Being that I’m such a Mountain Dew fanatic, you may wonder why Diet Mountain Dew didn’t immediately join the mix. The answer is quite simple: I went through a brief period in high school when I drank only diet soda, and Diet Mountain Dew just wasn’t worth drinking. Diet Mountain Dew, as I remembered it, lost all of the magic of the real thing. There was no semblance of regular Mountain Dew whatsoever. In comparison, Diet Mountain Dew tasted like grapefruit, something like Fresca. Knowing this, I didn’t even bother trying Diet Mountain Dew for the first several weeks of my more recent change in drinking habits.

Very recently, Melanie and I stopped at Circle K and got some drinks. I wanted something brighter-flavored than cola or Diet Dr. Pepper. I wanted something citrusy. I decided to go crazy and try Diet Mountain Dew. I figured that because I’ve been drinking diet sodas for a while now, Diet Mountain Dew might not taste so bad. And was I right? Yes and no. Diet Mountain Dew still pales in comparison to regular Mountain Dew. It still tastes more like grapefruit than does its high fructose counterpart. And so, there is not enough family resemblance between them to completely quell my longings for the magical beverage that I fell in love with as a baby, when Mom and Dad used to put the stuff in my baby bottle. (Just kidding—although they may have. I know my younger sister was treated to soda even before she could speak.) But I thoroughly enjoyed the drink nonetheless. And I’ve learned something I never had the chance to realize back in high school. If you’re drinking Diet Mountain Dew while eating, the beverage is even tastier. Quite good, even. At least now that I’ve reached the point where the aftertaste of aspartame is no longer noticeable to me.

I’ve also learned something else about Mountain Dew through all of this. It is not merely the taste of Mountain Dew that makes it such a wonderful delight. There is a tactile quality to it, as well. “In what sense does it have a different tactile quality than any other soda?” I can hear you all asking. Oh, but it does. There is something very smooth and silky about Mountain Dew. I figure it’s the brominated vegetable oil. But here’s the good news: Diet Mountain Dew also has brominated vegetable oil in it. And so, the beverage has the same silken texture that regular Mountain Dew has. And that’s a really nice thing. (As for the bad side of brominated vegetable oil, we’ll just ignore that for now.)

Brrrrrr!

2011-01-12T12:51:00.003-05:00

It’s just after noon here in Tallahassee, Florida. The temperature outside is 41° F, though weather.com says it feels like only 34° F. I’m inside, so I can’t say. But I believe it. It’s been brutally cold here lately. The winter started off quite fickle. On New Year’s Day, it was 75° F outside. I was comfortably walking around in a t-shirt and shorts. A day or two after (or was it before?) that, it actually snowed here. You could barely see it, but it was there. I had to stand with my arms outstretched, collecting tiny pieces of white fuzz along my black sleeves, in order to convince myself it really was snow. It was. And yesterday, as I waited for a morning bus to take me to school, I froze. I had worn long pants, one of my heavier, long-sleeved shirts, and a jacket to boot. Even so, it felt bitter. Hellish. I use that word quite literally. I know the Judeo-Christian religions opt to speak of Hell in terms of fire and brimstone, but I imagine it as barren, cold, dark, and desolate. Much like winter can feel. Soulless. Vacant. Hauntingly bare, even of warmth.

Here’s the kicker: I kind of liked it. It helped that it wasn’t completely dark outside, that I wasn’t immensely tired and up before dawn. In wintertime, being up before the sun is the hellish icing on the (devil’s food?) cake. Then you’ve got the darkness without and the lack of vitality within that can almost convince you that you’re in the netherworld. As it was, I was out in the hustle and bustle of the day. It was just a colder, grayer version thereof. The kind of day where you can search the sky for an inch of blue and not find it. So what was I so fond of? I think it felt nostalgic to me. More like the genuine winters I remember from childhood. Granted, there wasn’t a blanket of snow here, but there wasn’t always snow as a kid, either. The point is that it felt as wintertime always did to me growing up: timeless, or perhaps more appropriately, frozen. No matter how busy the street you may be standing on, in winter, everything somehow translates into still life. There’s a nostalgic, melancholy quality to it, even if it sometimes feels like death.

Sometimes when I fantasize about the future, I imagine myself living somewhere that has brutal winters. Odds are, I’ll live somewhere with much harsher winters than I’ve had to deal with over the last few years. I don’t aspire to this, but it’s statistically likely. And in some regard, it sounds right and good. I think I’d hate it, but I also think it could feel like home. Not just the home I grew up in, but home-like in general. Having a family and a house and growing old—shouldn’t there be memories involving snow somewhere in there? Maybe there’s something spiritual about facing the harshness of winter and being redeemed of it come spring. Even on a daily basis, there may be spiritual symbolism in being thrust into the cold, dark winter world and fighting against it until you find salvation in the comfort of returning home, baptized in the light and warmth of modern electricity, not to mention family.

So, are they winter wonderlands or winter wastelands? I’m not sure it makes much difference. Either way, they’re quiet. And I’ve enjoyed the opportunity to hear myself think.

Potpourri No. 29

2011-01-07T15:52:00.001-05:00

Phony Baloney
It's been just under one year since Melanie and I dropped our one Sprint cell phone and opted for two prepaid cell phones from Tracfone. The service is spottier, but overall, Tracfone has served our needs. About two days ago, I finally ran out of the first official set of minutes that I purchased for my cell phone. Those 900 minutes cost me $80, and it cost me $20 to get the phone in the first place. If you do the math, that means my prepaid cell phone is costing me approximately $8.50 per month. That's a much better value than the $40-50 it cost me every month for the barest of plans from Sprint. Now, I don't know how much we've spent on Melanie's cell phone, but it isn't enough to make up the difference. Clearly, switching to prepaid cell phones was the right move for us.

Movie Club, Anyone?
I watch a decent amount of movies, and many of them are movies that not a lot of other people see. Sometimes I see a movie that I really wish other people would see, either because I think those people would thoroughly enjoy it, or because I think the film merits attention. I tell my family about these movies sometimes, but I know they'll never bother tracking them down. A while back, I started thinking that perhaps I should start a long-distance movie club with my family, kind of like a book club. The basic idea would be something like this: once a month, we all watch the same movie at some point during the first week of the month. We trade off who chooses the movie, but everyone must watch that same film. The person choosing the movie would pick a movie he/she knows (or at least strongly supposes) few to none of the others have seen. It should be a movie that the person thinks should be seen. After everyone has watched the movie, we could discuss it via the web—on my blog, for instance. Does anyone have any interest in doing this? It wouldn't have to be limited to family, but that's practically all that reads my blog anyway. We could begin pretty much right away, if we wanted. And heck, maybe to start off, we could all choose a movie that everyone else has to watch during the first month. It'd be like a film festival of recommended films, a little cinematic feast to get the ball rolling and get us thinking about movies. Who's game?

Sick of Sickness
I've had a lot more anxiety over the last few months than I typically do, most of it revolving in some way or another around my and my family's physical well-being. It seems neverending that something is going on. I had diverticulitis in early October. Then Creegan came along and dealt with serious jaundice and pyloric stenosis. On top of that, we've all been passing colds back and forth. And has it stopped? Not at all. Yesterday, Creegan was throwing up quite a bit and seemed not to be feeling very well. And a few days ago, Edison got attacked by fire ants and ended up with about 15 bites on his right hand plus about 5 bites on his left hand. His right hand has been massively swollen for days, and the itching and general anxiety he feels over it has sometimes left him having near-delirious fits. And, of course, our "wonderful" new minivan keeps getting sick too. I'm writing this blog in the waiting room of the repair shop, where they are replacing the fuel pump at an estimated cost of $400. (Good thing all of my money right now is make-believe! It makes it easier to part with!) At this point in time, Melanie and I are desperate for a week to go by when nothing overwhelming happens. It's not easy to be optimistic about that.

Back to School
This post wouldn't be complete without a brief mention that, yes, another semester has begun. The really cool thing about this semester is that I'm not taking any official classes of my own. I have a TA gig that obligates me to be on campus for about three hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but other than that, I'm doing independent work. Motivation and discipline will be the challenge, but I admit that I'll enjoy only going to campus twice per week. Even though I do schoolwork six days a week, it’ll be nice having five-day weekends. Working from home is nice.

Out with the Bad, In with the Good

2010-12-31T13:46:00.001-05:00

I know. I risk boring even myself as I continue to write about diet and health issues. How much duller can it get? But this is probably the last time in a while that I’ll feel inspired to write about these things, at least in any great detail. And I’m not going into that much detail today. It’s just that I’ve spent the last week being much more relaxed about what food I eat, and I’ve noticed a huge difference in the way I feel. That seemed worthy of a post.

As I recently noted, I feel very good about the efforts I’ve made. However, from Christmas Eve through New Year’s, I decided not to restrict myself. I wasn’t going to go overboard, but I wasn’t going to avoid things, and Christmas day itself was a free-for-all. Today, New Year’s Eve, is also supposed to be a free-for-all. You probably think that means I’m having lots of fun. But the truth is – I kind of hate it. As soon as the protective dietary walls came down, I’ve felt worse. More sluggish, more uncomfortable in my gut. The good news is, this motivates me. I’m actually looking forward to being more disciplined again. It feels better. I wasn’t on my new health kick for very long, but I’m glad I can already recognize a difference. That’s an inspiring thing. In fact, I’ve been surprised to learn that eating better has resulted in me getting full faster. I didn’t notice that while I was eating better, but since reverting back to recklessness, I can tell I don’t want to eat as much as I used to. We got pizza a few days ago, and I ate less than I normally would have and felt like I’d eaten too much. It’s probably a good thing – just one piece of pizza I ate had half a day’s worth of saturated fat in it. (Cheese is a killer, I’m afraid.) Even though I’ve been more relaxed, I’ve been paying attention to what I eat, and there have been a couple of days when I’ve taken in almost three times the daily recommended amount of saturated fat. That’s easy to do when something like a half cup of egg nog gives you 25% of the recommended daily amount. But it’s also pretty freaky.

So yes, I’m finishing out the year with all the bad stuff, and I’ll begin the New Year on a much better note. I really will go back to better practices, even after this splurge. I’m not worried about that. If sheer feeling better weren’t enough motivation, there’s also the fact that in the brief time since I’ve seen my doctor, I think I’ve dropped a pound or two. I’m not sure. I got a bathroom scale several days ago, and according to it I weigh ten pounds less than I did when I was at the doctor. Some of that is probably due to differences in what I was wearing and, perhaps, differences in the scales themselves. But I’m crossing my fingers that those things cannot account for all ten pounds. Who knows, I may have put those pounds back on in the last few days, but I trust they’ll disappear again. Here’s to 2011!

Christmas 2010

2010-12-28T13:23:00.002-05:00

Another year and another great Christmas, our first as a family of five. If I tried to capture all of the details, it would take me forever, so I’ll just stick to some basics. In some ways, it’s hard to believe it’s already come and gone. I wish I had listened to more Christmas music than I did. Maybe then the Christmas season wouldn’t have felt so fleeting.

Melanie grew up with the tradition of acting out the Nativity on Christmas Eve. She wanted to carry that over to our family, but this was the first year we’ve done it (though we didn’t wait until Christmas Eve). With a four- and a two-year-old as our lead actors, the production was a bit more avant-garde than we would have planned, but that’s OK. Edison and Peter did their best in the various roles which they played. Here is a picture of them in character as, respectively, Mary and Joseph, at the door of the inn. Mary (Edison) is holding onto the donkey, played skillfully by air molecules.

The traditions continued on Christmas Eve, when Melanie again prepared a delicious soup that was served in bread bowls. This year’s soup: Pumpkin Coconut Bisque. If you’ve ever been fortunate enough to taste butternut squash soup, this is in the same ballpark—or, should I say, gourd patch! LOL!—though it was quite gingery. It was yummy, though it had over a day’s worth of saturated fat in it. (Sorry, I’m sort of stuck in that mode lately!) Adding to the richness, we drank egg nog. Both the egg nog and the soup were sprinkled with nutmeg. For good measure, we also had Mountain Dew. It was wonderfully indulgent. Here are some pics:

Knowing we would have lots of presents to open on Christmas morning, we let Edison and Peter each open a gift on Christmas Eve. They did this last year and received Christmas blankets, which they then took with us as we drove around looking at Christmas lights, another Christmas Eve tradition. This year we let Eddie and Peter choose what to open. Edison ended up opening a super cool helicopter from Grandma and Grandpa with the Silly Car (Melanie’s parents, so-named because Melanie’s mom drives a Volkswagen Beetle—a model of car that a younger Edison once dubbed “silly”). Peter opened a new kitty cat from the same grandparents.

Like last year, Edison and Peter fell asleep during our drive to look at Christmas lights. Unlike last year, Edison woke up when we got back home. Fortunately, he easily went back to sleep, and Melanie and I were able to get to work on prepping for Christmas morning. We wouldn’t be to sleep until around 2 a.m. Of course, we were up by 7 a.m.

Christmas morning was great, but Edison’s being one year older made a big difference in how things progressed. Last year, Eddie and Peter were content to open one gift at a time and spend quite a while playing with it. The unwrapping process lasted all day, which was neat. This year, Edison was much quicker to move on and to want to unwrap another gift. Peter followed suit, so things moved much more swiftly. It didn’t start out that way, however. The first gift Edison and Peter discovered was the fire station Santa Claus left, a kind of doll house complete with three identical (and disturbingly pantless) firemen, an ambulance, a fire truck, a helicopter, a fire pole, a Dalmatian and dog house, and various furniture (everything from an outdoor grill to a large screen TV to a treadmill). Eddie and Peter have loved the fire station. They have played with it more than with anything else, and they spent the first while on Christmas morning playing with it alone. It was almost an afterthought when Edison finally moved on to find his stocking. Peter was even slower to move on. Throughout the day, they continually returned to the fire station. It helped that they eventually opened another set of smaller but fully-dressed firemen. It’s become quite the busy fire station.

Notice the lack of pants on the fireman. I think we may have gotten the stripper version of firemen. Careful, Santa Claus!

Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten about Creegan. From what I can tell, Creegan enjoyed his first Christmas. He peed and pooped and ate and cried and spit up and everything. He really seemed himself, so I think he was having a good time. And yes, he received presents, including a stylish new outfit from my parents, pictured below.

Although it looks even better out of the box...

Surprisingly, Creegan himself gave out some gifts. Some of the best gifts of the day, in fact. Smiles. He’s only started smiling very often this week, and Christmas was one of the best days for it. I got the biggest, longest smile from him ever that day. Sadly, the huge smile was long gone by the time Melanie grabbed the camera, but we still got a few good pics. Here are a couple of them:

I got some cool stuff. One of the coolest is a digital scale for the kitchen. Now I can weigh in grams or ounces just how much cheese I’m eating, etc. This will really help me in keeping track of what I’m eating. Another really fun item I received is the new Michael Jackson CD. I know there has been some controversy surrounding it, but overall, I think it’s a very good album and I’ve enjoyed listening to it. Melanie also received some gifts that I’ve benefitted from. Aside from eating some of the treats she got, I’ve utilized her new family-size grill. (Not to be confused with the kind of family-size grill that cannibals favor.) I first used the grill for Christmas breakfast, which consisted of egg nog French toast and a hash brown / egg / sausage medley. I’ve since used it to make grilled cheese sandwiches. It’s nice not having to make one piece of French toast or one sandwich at a time. The grill is a nice addition to our home.

Aside from half-naked firemen, Eddie and Peter both received Nerf guns, swords, Transformers, sleeping bags, an indoor tent (jointly shared between them), books, and more. Our movie collection also swelled. We went from owning zero movies on Blu-ray to owning six—Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs; Despicable Me; The Sixth Sense; The Dark Knight; Inception; and Slumdog Millionaire. If that weren’t enough, we also got some DVDs—Bolt; The Pursuit of Happyness; Lars and the Real Girl (which I strongly encourage everyone to see, despite the fact that the setup sounds like it could be questionable—it’s one of the sweetest movies in existence); and the first two seasons of 30 Rock. Santa found some great deals, I think, and I’m not sure his helping elves always realized how much the other helping elves were doing. Not that I’m complaining. We actually haven’t bought movies in quite a long time, so this was fun.

And that’s that. Here are a few final pics, just to round things out. I hope everyone else had a wonderfully merry Christmas!

Health Hath No Fury

2010-12-23T08:26:00.000-05:00

After my bout with diverticulitis in early October, I’ve been watching my fiber intake quite closely. Since that time, I have not gone a day without eating at least 25g of fiber, and often I’m closer to 30g. It hasn’t always been easy, but it’s getting easier, and I’m pleased with the options that exist out there for high-fiber food.

Last week, I went to the doctor for a routine physical, something I haven’t done in years. Before my doctor’s visit, I was instructed to have some blood lab work done. Overall, the results were quite positive, and the things that need improvement are not that daunting. I’m low on vitamin D, which is not so much a dietary thing as a matter of not spending enough time in the sun. My cumulative cholesterol level is in the normal range, although the ratio of good cholesterol to bad cholesterol needs improvement. I was told to be careful with saturated fats in order to help with that. And finally, my blood sugar level was basically at the very top of the normal range. Because my family has a history of diabetes, it is worth being extra careful with this. It’s recommended that I limit my carb and sugar intake.

Since my doctor’s visit, I’ve been tracking not only my fiber intake, but my carb and saturated fat intake. I’m proud of myself. I’m allowing these things genuinely to influence my decisions about what I eat. The other day, I ate a side of raw spinach without any salad dressing on it. I’ve hardly had any regular soda in the past week. When my family recently ordered a peppermint shake to share, I had only one bite of it and felt fine with that. I’m not being complete anal, especially with it being the holiday season. I know I will be having treats here and there, and I don’t even plan to pay attention to carbs or saturated fat on Christmas or New Year’s Eve. The cool thing is, if you’re selective about what you eat, the occasional treat doesn’t completely destroy you.

As an example of how well this is working for me, the other day Melanie and I decided to splurge and go to Chick-fil-A. We’re down to our last few “free combo meal” coupons that we received when I won a “year of free Chick-fil-A.” A few months ago, here’s what I would have eaten on a typical visit to Chick-fil-A:

1 spicy chicken sandwich (includes lettuce, tomato, pickles, and pepper jack cheese)
1 large waffle fries
1 large Dr. Pepper (refilled once or twice)
3 pouches of mayonnaise (2 to dip my fries in, 1 on my sandwich)

On my most recent trip to Chick-fil-A, here’s what I ate:

1 chargrilled chicken sandwich (includes lettuce, tomato, and pickles)
1 medium waffle fries
1 medium Diet Dr. Pepper (refilled once or twice)
1 pouch of light mayonnaise (to dip my fries in)

I share these details because I’m quite pleased with myself. I’m especially pleased that I’m making these choices so happily, not begrudgingly or only with great effort. And I’m quite pleased with the Chick-fil-A visit because I considered fast food a splurge, and yet that day ended up being one of my very best in terms of what I ate. My grand totals for the day that we went to Chick-fil-A were 243.5g carbs and 14g saturated fat. That’s about 81% and 70% of the recommended daily intake values, respectively. To reiterate, on a day when I went out to eat fast food, I still only consumed 70% of the recommended saturated fat daily intake level throughout the entire day! As Vanessa Bayer impersonating Miley Cyrus would say, that’s pretty cool!

I suppose it will take some time to see the results of all of this. I’m tempted to say I’ve felt more awake and alert and energetic in the mornings these past few days, but I’m not sure if that can be because of these changes. I’m not entirely sure how that would make sense. I know diet affects your energy levels, but would that happen from reducing carbs and saturated fats in particular, and especially this quickly? I still think it may be a fluke, but I’m not complaining. Anyway, time for me to go eat some high-fiber oatmeal. Laters!

Pessimism

2010-12-18T20:36:00.004-05:00

Somebody on Facebook linked to the following comic, which I think will speak to quite a few people I know. It comes from the xkcd website, which as a grad student, I’ve been directed to a number of times. Enjoy.