Super Why is Awful

It's the worst children's show on television. Yes, and I know Barney is still being aired regularly. Super Why is worse. It's horrible. It's an affront to thinking parents and a shameful way to introduce children to classic literature.

Super Why is one of those shows that sprang up in the wake of Dora the Explorer and Blue's Clues. (Apparently, it's produced by the team that created Blue's Clues.) It's purportedly educational and supposedly encourages literacy - the characters talk directly to their audience and tell them to point out letters and read words and stuff like that. That's fine. A lot of shows do that, and that's not a problem. Here's the issue, though. They're murdering the classics of children's literature - the Brothers Grimm, Mother Goose, Hans Christian Andersen, the stories we all remember when we were children.

They tell the stories, which is nice, I suppose. But they ruin them by retooling the morals!! They twist the fucking things around so that the moral of the story - the whole POINT of the story - is either wrong or watered down to some namby-pamby inoffensive platitude.

Example 1: they took on Hansel and Gretel in one episode. Once you sort through all the "point to the A!" crap, basically, they told the story of Hansel and Gretel. They went into the forest, they saw a witch's house made of candy, they started eating it. The witch came out and got angry. And then they revealed the "message" of the story - they should have asked permission first. Yes, sure, when you encounter a witch in the forest who wants to eat your cherubic German flesh, you should ask permission before eating her evil candy house.

That's not the goddamn story! The story is that the children are starving, the witch is evil and wants to eat them, she traps them with her candy house as bait, and they throw her in the oven and then take her gold back to their father and they never go hungry again. The moral is that witches are evil!!!!! (Of course, I mean fairy-tale witches, not any actual practical Wiccans or witches who may be reading this. Characters in fairy tales bear no relation to the real thing in real life, and I mean that referring to witches, wizards, bears, children, queens. Nothing is real in fairy tales.) It's not about asking permission. It's about many things - beware of strangers, stick together in difficult circumstances, never trust a candy house. It's not about "please, may I?"

Example 2: This was the one that finally set me off. They did "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" recently. It might be an old episode - I just saw it recently, along with Oliver. Same thing - blah blah blah read these letters, blah blah blah what's the magic word, blah blah blah let's solve the mystery! Kid keeps crying wolf, parents don't believe him, finally kid gets in trouble and parents don't believe him. Right? And the moral is - don't lie to your parents and they'll believe you when you need them. That's the moral that you and I remember from our childhood. That's the point of the story. "Crying wolf" = "lying."

Except these pinheads decided the moral of the story was "parents should believe their children." "Oh, we should have believed you," his parents lament at the end of the episode. No, they shouldn't have! The message is that telling lies will get you in trouble! This is one of those classic fables that has a scary consequence at the end - the wolf eats all the kid's sheep. There are even some versions where the kid gets eaten, too. Fables are scary for a reason.

Look, no one wants to see their kid get eaten or baked by a witch, but the heart of these fables is in the telling. By screwing around with the message of these fables, they're completely undermining their ability to educate kids. I read classic stories and fables to my kid all the time, and I'll even tell them to him as a bedtime story. I want him to remember the message behind them. Fables are for teaching morals and rules of behavior. If you want to teach someone their letters, fine. Use pointless and imaginary stories like Dora does. Don't fuck with classic stories for no good reason.

I hate Super Why. I stopped recording it on our Tivo, and I change the channel every time it comes on. I don't ever want Oliver to tell me that I got some story wrong because he heard it differently on Super Why. Stupid anti-literature show. Stupid brain-crippling piece of crap. Don't let your kid watch this show. It's horrible.

Temporarily Permanent

Still at the temp job.

It's not bad, really. It's honest work. I stay busy every day, and despite all the smack I said in a previous post about my boss, she's not actually too bad. She respects my work and makes a point of telling me I'm doing a good job.

The biggest strain, really has been financial. I've been working since late May, and I just got my first paycheck a couple of days ago. Originally, I was promised a paycheck by the second week of June. It didn't happen. We had to wait for some other company to pay our invoices before we got our paychecks, and for some reason, they couldn't be bothered to get those checks to us. Every day, I'd ask, and every day, I'd hear that there was no word when the
paycheck would arrive. It got pretty tense for a while. We were literally running out of money. Mrs. B was putting off bills, which we both hate to do. But I finally got a check, and that makes us both breathe easier.

Even though I'm "working," I'm still filing for unemployment. Filing, not collecting, because I work too much each week to collect UI benefits. I thought the job would end last week, but it looks like it's been extended for the foreseeable future. I'm earning more than I did at my last job (though working more hours and getting no fringe benefits). And I'm still sending out resumes every week. So it's odd - working, yet unemployed. Working and yet looking. I can work here as long as I want the job, at least through the end of the year. My life could be a lot worse, I suppose.

Revenge of the Lawn

I just looked at my lawn and said to myself, "I wonder why it doesn't look better."

I live in a rental home. I have never planted grass seed on my lawn. I have never fertilized it. I have clover growing wild in my lawn. Moss. Patches of thistle. Plants that I can't even recognize. It looks like a well-trimmed vacant lot.

I'm also mowing my lawn with dull blades. My lawnmower desperately needs to have the blades resharpened. Right now, it's not mowing so much as blunt force trauma. The grass grows long and crazy and points in four different directions, and there are some stretches where the mower didn't have any effect at all and the grass is just laying down, five inches long and silently mocking me.

I wonder why it doesn't look better, I thought to myself. And then I burst out laughing.

Temping It Out

Oh my gawd, dear readers. I hope I land a real job soon, because the temp job I'm doing now is stressing me the hell out.

I'm working for a few weeks for a friend, partly as a favor and partly for the money. She's not the most organized person in the world, so I get a lot of late-night phone calls and emails at 2 in the morning. The last week has been a little weird, what with not knowing what my day is going to be like until I show up in the office. It's fine for a temp job, but the level of expectation my friend has is starting to bug me.

I'm looking for a permanent job, of course. And my friend knows this, and she's been saying the right things about how my search for a permanent job has to take priority. (It really has to. In order to stay eligible for unemployment, I need to be available every day for job interviews or jobs. So legally, a permanent job has to be my priority.) But she's been talking out of both sides of her mouth - simultaneously saying that she wants to give me the time to look for a permanent job, AND that she needs me available at a moment's notice to do anything that pops into her head.

She called me today at 1 pm to see if I could do a shitload of paperwork today. That afternoon. In the next two hours.

I was with my kid, in a toy store.

Yesterday, she told me that she would be dealing with this very stack of paperwork herself. But today it got tossed in my lap, and when I said I couldn't do it, I got the passive-aggressive guilt trip about not being available. The kind of thing that happens with nonprofit work. "What do you mean you don't want to drop everything for the job? Don't you care about the work? Don't you care about THE MOVEMENT?!"

I have a bunch of job interviews next week, and she's sweating me that one of the interviews is on a day when things are going to be frantic at the office. I need a damn job, not some temporary stopgap bullshit! I do not get paid enough to be at this person's beck and call like a genie in a fucking bottle.

Never work for friends. Never, ever take a job because somebody's a friend and you want to do them a favor. Jeezus Christ on a pogo stick.

Pink Slip

For the second time in two years, I found myself cleaning out my desk this week.

Seriously. Again.

The first time, I was completely stunned. I didn't see it coming at all. I thought I was actually making good progress and was looking forward to discussing next year's goals, and instead, I was turning in my keys.

But this time...

This time, I smelled it coming. I had a really lousy week the previous week, and I knew my boss wasn't happy with me. I expected that we would have a stern conversation sometime this week. But when I walked in, and the head honcho was also sitting there, I knew things were going down.

I've definitely had some issues at work. A couple of deadlines that I was chasing pretty furiously. I was seeing this week as the week when I would prove my worth again, demonstrate again that I was the person they wanted in this position. They were taking a chance hiring me, and I wanted so badly to prove that the gamble was worth it. It WAS worth it - I learned a tremendous amount, I did some fantastic work, and I'm proud of what I did.

But I slipped. I let my anxiety and my fear of failure get the best of me, started getting sloppy on collecting information. Deadlines started creeping closer and closer. I started fibbing to my supervisor about where I was on projects. There's a thing that happens when you start falling behind and the workload never stops. You keep thinking you'll get to a spot where you can catch up, some quiet week. You think you'll work a few evenings, maybe some time on the weekend to catch up. You keep thinking that you'll catch up sometime down the road, and then the end of the road happens.

Could I have stopped this? Maybe. Did I see this coming in time? I don't think so. By the time I sensed trouble, it was already too late. Maybe I should have visited the therapist more often. Maybe I should have worked more on the weekend. Maybe ... maybe ... maybe ...

And then again, maybe it was inevitable. I was being brought in as an entry-level employee, doing way advanced-level work. Every fundraising job right now is being expected to overperform in a terrible economy; there's less money out there, but we're all being to find every available dollar. I was brought in as a rookie who was expected to perform like a ten-year veteran, and when I couldn't keep up with the frantic pace being set, I got the axe. Was it my fault for not being able to keep running, or their fault for pushing me too hard?

It doesn't matter now. What matters now is moving on. I've got to move onto another job, and this job search is going to be a little more complicated than the last one. But I'm feeling oddly relieved by this. Sure, I'm back on unemployment, and sure, I hate having to start the search process all over again. But maybe it's time to find a job that's actually at my level. This might be a genuine case where the last job wasn't a good fit, and I can use this to really find something that really matches where I'm at.

I'm feeling good about this, people. Really. If I got through the last search in the dead of the recession, I can get through this one.

Mumbleberry Pie

I quite enjoyed this NY Times article on the National. It's a great piece on a band filled with literate, brilliant, and obviously strong-willed individuals. The tension between them explains quite a bit about the music they create.

The National Agenda

Also, it contains two of the best quotes I've ever seen in the Times on any subject.

This, describing the process of perfecting a new song:

“Lemonworld,” for instance, had by now sustained upwards of 80 takes followed by upwards of 80 onslaughts of derision. Versions of the song had been fragged for being really annoying, really bombastic, really boring, really cheesy, too destabilized, really meatball, really saccharine, too sludgefest, too Dave Matthews swank and too all-fancy razzle-dazzle. At one point, Bryan worried aloud, “We’re throwing the baby out with the bath water,” to which Matt replied, “What is the baby?”

And then this description of the lead vocalist, Matt Berninger:

Over the years, Matt has accumulated a flock of snide nicknames from his band mates, including the Dark Lord, the Naysayer, Mumbleberry Pie, Mr. Knee Jerk, Mr. Sony Headphones and the Echo Chamber.

Jesus and the Silver Surfer

My son and I are hanging out in the office, watching Fantastic Four trailers on YouTube. (What?)

He sees the Silver Surfer appear onscreen. He asks if anyone knows who he is, and I say he doesn't.

"Except him?" Oliver asks.

I look at him, confused.

"Does he know himself?"

"Yes, I guess he does know himself." My son, the philosopher.

~~~

A few minutes later, he asks me if the Silver Surfer can die. I answer that I don't think he can.

"I hope he can't. I hope he's like Jesus."

Yes, that's the conversation we had on Easter: whether the Silver Surfer can rise from the dead like Jesus.

The Truth about Me

I've been living a double life, and it's time to end it.

I've been hiding my identity for years, using a pseudonym.  Most of you know that Sky Bluesky is not my real name.  Parts of the life I describe on this blog are real, and some of them are fabricated to make it harder to identify me.  I have wanted for years to tell the truth about who I am, but I had to wait until the right time when my words could no longer be used against me. I've said things on this blog that could make my professional life very difficult.

But it's time to end the mystery.  It's time for me to tell the world who I really am.  So on this day, April 1, 2010, I am removing the veil.

My name is Greg Nickels.

Yes, that Greg Nickels.  The former mayor of Seattle.  

As you can imagine, leading this double life has been extremely stressful, but it's also been a delightful creative exercise.  I have had the opportunity to craft a new life, a new family, and speak candidly through the voice of another.

• Obviously, the son I have created, Oliver, is a fabrication.  I have two wonderful children, Jacob and Carey, and I have used my memories of their youth to create the fanciful adventures of my "son" Oliver.  

• As I said, parts of my story were true.  I do live in west Seattle, as some of you know.  One of the most difficult moments in my pseudonymous life was the snowstorm in 2008, when my office was pilloried for reacting slowly to the dramatic snowfall.  Many jokes were made about whether my own neighborhood would be plowed out when so many other roads in Seattle were impassable.  I heard you, loud and clear.  I wrote about it, jokingly, but it hurt my heart that I had failed the city so badly. 

• Some of you may doubt that this is truly former Mayor Nickels, but I want you to ask yourselves:  why did Sky Bluesky never opine about the recent mayoral race in Seattle?  I couldn't, you see.  Not only were my hands tied legally, but by speaking at all about that race, it would have tipped my hand.  So I was forced to remain quiet, even though I very definitely had a favorite candidate.

• I am, in fact, a tremendous fan of Wilco.  I have had Jeff Tweedy over to my house twice, and he is a charming and decent fellow.  He took the name of his last album from my pseudonym.  We had a good laugh about that.  

• Everything about the weight loss is true, with the exception of the actual numbers.  I have been fighting my weight for years, but I feel I have finally gotten the upper hand on this.

• One more thing:  Sky Bluesky was not my original choice for my pseudonym.  As a play on my last name, I was tempted to call myself Henny Penny.  (See how clever that is?  Penny - Nickels?  Get it?)  I asked my deputy Mayor, Tim Ceis (the only member of my staff who knew about this blog) and he told me in no uncertain terms that it was not only a terrible name, but it was a lame joke.  Ah well.  

In the future, I look forward to sharing my thoughts here on the political landscape of Seattle and the country, as well as continuing to blog about my favorite music, odd stories that cross my mind, and the wonderful meals that my wife Sharon prepares.  Godspeed.

Sincerely,

Greg 

Good Knight!

Mrs. B and Oliver had the most hilarious interplay last night.  They were playing with legos or puppets or something, and Oliver decided to say that his little guy was a knight.  A good knight, not a bad knight.

O:  "I'm a good knight!"

Mrs. B: (slyly) "Good night!"

She burst out laughing.  He just got annoyed.  So he tried to explain again that he was a good knight.

Mrs. B: "Good night!"

O:  "No, I'm a knight!"

Mrs. B: "Good night!"

O:  "No!"  

And then he tried to clarify.  "There are two kinds of nights.  I'm the kind of knight that rides a horse.  I'm not the kind of night that you say when you say good night."

Mrs. B:  "Good night!"

O:  "Stop it."

That kept going for at least ten minutes, and Mrs. B and I kept cracking up every time she delivered the line.

Why Health Care Matters

Some very smart people have written about what the historic vote on health care reform means.  What it means for Republicans, what it means for Democrats, what it means for the public's view of government, what it means for the country.  I'm not going to try and retread those well-worn paths.  Let me tell you what this battle means to me.

Yes, that's right, me.  All politics is local, and all politics is personal.  So let me tell you about my journey of learning about why health care matters.

Ten years ago, I started working in the world of social justice.  I was a canvasser.  I was one of those people who knocks on your door and asks you if you have a minute, and tells you about some political issue you probably weren't thinking about, and then asks you to take action or donate money so that the fight on that political issue can continue.

It was a job.  I had just been fired from my last job and had no idea what I was going to do with my life.  It was a decent-paying job that required no experience, just the ability to make a good argument and to think on one's feet.  I could do that.  So I became a canvasser.

I became an activist, in the parlance of the movement.  We weren't just canvassers.  We were activists.  We were community organizers, sowing the seeds of grassroots power, one doorstep at a time.  

But the problem was this.  We weren't talking about revolutionary issues.  We were talking about ... health care.  Prescription drug prices.  Access to insurance.  I didn't get it.  I thought health care was a pretty middle-class issue, not very exciting, not very revolutionary.  Health care just wasn't that big a deal.  Why weren't we talking about homelessness, or defunding the military, or banning nuclear bombs?  What did health care matter?

One thing I did notice, though.  A lot of people didn't have anything to say, or didn't have time to talk.  But the ones who did would open up.  Their stories would come pouring out of them, often with tears and shaking voices and anger.  And the more I talked to people, the more I saw how important health care really was.  

I talked to men who would bring out their handwritten lists of medications - ten, fifteen, twenty different drugs - and tell me which ones they knew they had to have, and which ones they knew they could skip if they couldn't afford them.  "These pills all cost money," they explained, "and sometimes, you gotta make choices."  

I talked to people who faithfully paid their premiums every month, only to find that their insurance company refused to cover their illnesses when they became sick.  They did nothing wrong except to become sick, and their insurance companies suddenly found exemptions, exclusions, limitations in their coverage.  Profits over people.  It happens more often than any of us realize.  

I talked to people who were too young for Medicare, too ill to work, and too healthy to qualify for disability or Medicaid.  They were trapped without health insurance, holding their breath and hoping that they wouldn't get sick.  Prayer.  That was their health care plan.  Pray you don't get sick.

I talked to people who knew that if they got sick, their only choice was the emergency room.  They couldn't afford the bills.  They would get a payment plan if they had to go to the ER, and they would pay what they could, and they would fall behind, and the ER would send their account to a collection agency, and they would probably go bankrupt over it.  Over health care costs.

I brought people to Olympia to protest against the high cost of prescription drugs.  I helped organize rallies and town hall meetings to demand access to health care.  I fought with my heart and soul against proposed increases in health care costs for the poorest of the poor, against threatened termination of our state's Basic Health plan.  I met people who would weep when they thought about losing their health care.  I met people who knew they would die without health care.

I met people who are dead now.  They died because they had no health care, and they put off the visit to the doctor until the next paycheck came in.  They didn't get checked because they couldn't afford the bill, and their illnesses got worse, and then when they needed to see the doctor, their choices were emergency rooms and sliding scale clinics with lines going out the door.  Yes, people died.  Lack of health care kills people in this country, thousands of people every year.  People I knew and cared deeply about, and they died because of the injustice of our health care system.

I know that this bill will not solve everything.  I know that we - the activists, the grassroots, the netroots - have much work yet to do.  But twelve million more people are going to have access to health care now.  Medicare and Medicaid will be expanded.  More money will be available so people who can't afford health insurance can get it.  The foolish policies that kept people with pre-existing conditions from getting health insurance will go away.  Insurance companies will be banned from canceling health insurance policies when their customers get sick. 

Things are going to get better.  God willing, less people will die now because of lack of health insurance.  And when they do, goddammit, people will pay attention.  Because health care is one of the most important issues facing our country.  Our health care system is broken, deranged, a failed machine running amok.  This bill will make some long-needed repairs to the machine.  It's not a complete fix.  It's not a new machine.  But we needed a fix, and this is a good fix, and it is too long in coming.  

(Once again, thanks to the awesome Jamie Mulligan for the great canvasser picture.)

Endgame for ACORN

ACORN has been crumbling in the past few months.  Half of its state chapters have disaffiliated themselves from ACORN and reformed as independent organizations.  Now, according to the New York Times, ACORN is on the verge of filing for bankruptcy.  

The past few years have been catastrophic for ACORN, but not for the reasons most people think.  The trouble depended long before James McKeefe dressed up in his Pimps Я Us outfit and started harassing local offices.  

ACORN has had a long and troubled history.  I first learned about them when I got involved in grassroots organizing at the beginning of the last decade.  Shortly after I became an organizer, the local ACORN office was facing a strike from its own "organizers" (their term for canvassers).  They complained that they were working in unsafe conditions and not being paid fair hourly wages.  

The ugly situation peaked when ACORN strikers picketed outside the Seattle Labor Temple while ACORN management was attending coalition meetings inside.  It all ended after a NLRB ruling, a large settlement for back pay, the firing and replacement of the local office's manager, and the personal involvement of Wade Rathke, ACORN's CEO ... oh, pardon me, Chief Organizer.

Rathke, of course, was the center of a much larger scandal in 2008.  A firestorm erupted when it came to light that his brother, who was also on the salary of ACORN, had embezzled somewhere around a million dollars, or possibly more.  (The true amount has never been publicly revealed, to the best of my knowledge.)  Most companies, faced with a massive embezzlement, would call the FBI or the police.  But not ACORN, and not with the incestuous nature of the crime.  Instead, they buried the story.  A funder (apparently Drummond Pike, leader of the Tides Foundation) paid off the debt to ACORN and made a hush-hush payment arrangement with the criminal Rathke brother.  Only a select few board members ever knew about the secret, until the New York Times blew the whistle in July 2008.  

Afterward, Rathke attempted to explain why he would try to hide something this outrageous.  They - notably Rathke, the founder, CEO, and public face of ACORN - said that revealing the crime would put a "weapon" in the hands of its opponents.  But the cover-up revealed something much worse - no one was watching the books at ACORN.  They had failed the most basic test for nonprofits - they weren't keeping a close eye on their finances.  

Funders notice when things like this happen, and they reacted swiftly to the news.  By the fall of 2009, several major funders including the Ford Foundation, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, Bank of America and JPMorgan had all ceased their longstanding support of ACORN.  ACORN was sending out panicky fundraising letters with language like  "We need your help to survive."

By the time the videos started surfacing, ACORN was already on the way down.  O'Keefe was beating a dead horse.  It's possible that ACORN's crippled position made it easier for O'Keefe to get into multiple office.  But O'Keefe did not destroy ACORN.  

Republicans have been trying to make the name ACORN toxic since at least 2004.  James O'Keefe did some serious damage with his creatively edited videos and his wild stories.  (Note that no crimes have ever been charged in connection with the videos, except against O'Keefe himself.)   They were the final straw.  But ACORN's back had been broken long before. 

What actually brought it down was its own poor decisions and malfeasance.  If you want to blame someone for the collapse of ACORN, blame its founder.  Blame the man who became convinced that he could do no wrong, the man who created the house of cards and who blew it down. Wade Rathke built ACORN, and Wade Rathke deserves the blame for its collapse.  

And it's a damn shame.  ACORN has done some monumental work in its history:  fights against payday loan sharks, predatory lenders, redlining, fights for affordable housing.  They were a mighty force for good, but in the end, like so many great organizations, the hubris of its leader brought it low.  If we are fortunate, other powerful nonprofits will step in to take on the work that ACORN is no longer able to do.  We will not be better off without ACORN in the world.  

Previously:

ACORN Falls (November 6, 2009)

Dragging ACORN Through the Mud (September 23, 2009)

ACORN:  1.3 Million New Voters? (October 27, 2008)

ACORN - Demons and Smokescreens (October 20, 2008)

ACORN Haters Gotta Hate (October 13, 2008)

ACORN in Chaos (September 11, 2008)

More ACORN Fallout (August 18, 2008)

More Thoughts about ACORN (July 14, 2008)

The Fall of ACORN (July 9, 2008)

Wade Rathke - This I Pretend to Believe (February 2007)

And the Universe Began to Fold in Upon Itself...

Question from Oliver:  "Is today part of next week?"

Freddy Update

Oliver: "Last night Freddy killed 900 monsters. That's a lot!"

He explained that Freddy could make some kind of energy ball appear in his hand "and it can destroy monsters!" He told me the name of the ball, but I couldn't make it out. It was one of his nonsense words, I think, although it could have been a word learned from one of his friends at school. The concept sounds like something out of a cartoon - Dragonball Z or Pokemon? Sound familiar to anyone out there?

Monsters, Part Two: Good Monster Freddy

Is this Freddy?

The Good Monster Freddy report today:

Today, Freddy is four. Tomorrow, he will be five. The next day, he will be six.

Fun fact about Freddy: he cannot jump. (No explanation given. Maybe he doesn't have knees?!)

~ ~ ~

One day, after months of imagining monsters in every closet and around every corner, Oliver started talking about one monster who had a name, Good Monster Freddy.

(One unusual note: we don't have any friends named Freddy. I don't even think we own any storybooks with a character named Freddy. I have no earthly idea where the name came from, but that was his name and it's stuck. We've never heard him give a name to any other monster. Freddy's the only one.)

He talks about Good Monster Freddy all the time. His invisible world of monsters has transformed into one invisible and constant companion.

Oliver lives a parallel life with Freddy. When he's eating, Freddy is eating, often an identical meal. When he's waking up, Freddy is either still in bed or he's been awake "for hours!" Freddy lives in his own world, and somehow, as if he had one of those Lost-type wormholes, Oliver can see right into it and narrate the goings-on.

Freddy often comes along with us on trips and errands. We've been informed that Freddy has a tiny car that drives right under our car. Sometimes, though, he rides in the back seat with Oliver. He eats snacks with Oliver, joins him for dinner, lays down at bedtime with Oliver. He's your classic invisible friend.

We have no idea what Freddy looks like. Some days, he's tiny. Some days, he's 100 feet tall and has fifty heads and 300 arms. We've never seen him. (Obviously. Duh.)

He also don't know how old he is, because that changes every day. The only rule that he's established is that Freddy is a different age every day, and that seems to be the constant. Some days, he's one hundred. Some days (as in today), he's four. Some days he's a baby monster, some days an adult monster.

The monster war is still going on, incidentally, but it all happens through the lens of Freddy. Some days, we'll get the report that the bad monsters killed Freddy's parents. The next day (forgetting the last day's massacre), he'll tell us that Freddy killed every bad monster and ate all their heads. It changes every day.

We learn new things about Freddy every day, and some of them are completely out of left field. I'll try to post new Freddy facts as they arrive, but he's already delivered so many that I can't remember. Freddy is essentially the proxy for Oliver's ever-expanding imagination. He's the launch pad for a thousand crazy stories and wild flights of fancy. It's a hilarious and absolutely charming development.

Some day, he's going to outgrow his friend Freddy. I'm going to really miss him when that day arrives. I kinda like the guy.

Monsters, Part 1: Good Monsters, Bad Monsters

Our life is filled with monsters. Good monsters, bad monsters, nice monsters, mean monsters. They're everywhere. At least, they are to Oliver. He sees monsters everywhere he turns.

Monsters are a presence in most American kids' lives. They're in hundreds of books - from Maurice Sendak's Wild Things, to the weird creatures who inhabited Dr. Seuss' work, to modern classics like the Gruffalo (pictured above). They're just a presence, and it's small wonder that so many kids are fearful of monsters under the bed. They hear about monsters all the time - at some point, they just begin believing in them for reals.

When it started, Oliver had a typical kid's relationship to monsters: they were bad, they hid under beds and behind closet doors, and they were scary. I had a can of "monster spray" (a relabeled can of air freshener) that I would dutifully spray around his room when he thought there were monsters in there.

Then, the pattern changed. He started announcing that there were bad monsters, but that the good monsters were keeping them out of the house. I don't remember suggesting that good monsters were out there - that was all him.

And then, so gradually we didn't even notice it, the description of the monsters started getting - I don't know the right word. It started getting creative. Eccentric. Weird.

Maybe it was when he started telling us that he couldn't sleep because bad monsters were playing their instruments too loud. That's the first time I remember him getting really weird with the monster talk.

Eventually, monsters became his primary topic of conversation. Bad monsters were outside of the car, trying to pull him out of his car seat, but the good monsters wouldn't let them. Good monsters were constantly fighting with the bad monsters. Bad monsters wouldn't let him eat his food. Good monsters were directing traffic. He would talk about bad monsters who sped and disobeyed traffic rules, and the good monster police who would arrest them and put them in jail.

On some level, they were his version of angels and devils. There was a war being fought between mischievous entities - the bad monsters - and the ones who maintained order and goodness - the good monsters. He would report the skirmishes, but he was merely an observer to the battle. He couldn't change the results. He was just like Uatu, a watcher, permitted to observe but never to interfere.

He would wake up in the morning and be sad because a bad monster killed a good monster's mother. How do you placate someone who's mourning an invisible battle casualty?

He would announce the size of the opposing armies. There were a thousand good monsters, ten million bad monsters. The next day, there were five million good monsters and only a hundred bad monsters. It changed every day. Some days, he would tell us that all the bad monsters all died. The next day, it would change.

He rewrote the rules every day because, after all, it was his war. He remade the conflict every day and adjusted the players as he saw fit, like any good writer would. He would add tension, draw battle lines, create a heartbreaking loss, a triumphant victory. The only constant was the monsters. Whatever the numbers were, whatever was happening, wherever the fight was being waged, there were always good monsters and bad monsters.

And then one day, he introduced us to Freddy.

(to be continued...)

A Rough Night

Yesterday, Oliver had a multiple-meltdown afternoon. We went shopping around 4 and stopped in a Barnes & Noble for coffee and cookies. He got completely wild after that (he wanted to go to the kid's section of the bookstore and we didn't have time to go there) and threw himself on the ground. I picked him up and he hit me. Several times, about the head and the neck. He also tried to pinch me in the neck, which he knows drives me crazy and also hurts!

I sat him down on the sidewalk for a timeout. After a few minutes, I asked him if he was able to control himself. He said, no. So I picked him up and brought him to the car.

He tried to blame it on the sugar.  "The sugar made me act bad."  We told him, angrily, that he's in charge of his own body and nobody makes him behave badly except himself.  He was silent after that.  I could just feel him fuming in the back seat.  

We were planning to go out for dinner, but we told him that we might have to cancel our plans because of his behavior. Meltdown. Timeout. A few minutes later, meltdown again. More hitting. More timeouts.

After some discussion amongst ourselves, we decided to cancel going out to dinner. Which was punishing ourselves, really, but it's awful going out to dinner when he's being wild and uncontrollable. Plus, we wanted him to see hard consequences of his bad behavior. He needs to see that sometimes, just saying he's sorry doesn't fix everything.  So we told him about our decision and of course, he melted down again. Wild sobbing, more hitting, more crying, more throwing of things. 

It lasted all the way until bedtime, when he hit me on the way into the bedroom. He went to bed by himself for the first time in forever. (Which caused him to whine, "I want somebody to snuggle up with me!" It was a pretty drastic punishment, in his mind. One of us always lays down with him at bedtime.) Sigh.

And then at 3 am, Mrs. B started puking. She's got a nasty stomach bug and a fever to boot. She's upchucked a couple more times and she's been in bed all day. (it's 10:30 Seattle time, and she's still in bed.)  So it's just been me and Oliver together all morning while she recovers.   

Good news is that Oliver's behaving much better today. But there's no way in hell I'm dragging my poor pukey wife out to dinner tonight.

An Open Letter to NBC

Dear NBC Programming Geniuses,

I live in Seattle, less than three hours away from the site of the 2010 Olympics. Yet I cannot watch the Olympics events live - most of the major events appear to be tape delayed. I could read news stories, Tweets, blog posts and Facebook reports about the opening ceremonies, and even watch video highlights - but I couldn't see it in my own home on my own television until three hours after it had already happened.

You have ruined the Olympics for me. I intended to make this an opportunity to share the joy of the Olympics Games with my son. But the opening ceremonies, which started at our traditional dinner time, were tape delayed until after our son had gone to bed! So instead of sitting around the television that night, watching the opening ceremonies unfold, I was forced to record it with TiVo and show it to him the day after. The Olympics are no longer a family event for us. Thanks, NBC.

And then there's the constant irritation of watching events hours after they happen. By the time I saw Apolo Ohno win his silver medal, I already knew how the race was going to play out, thanks to the internet. Do you people not know that the internet exists?! There is no suspense, no drama, no excitement. Why watch, when I can just watch the highlights on YouTube?

Do you see what you have done? You have ruined the entire concept of the Olympics as a must-see event? You're killing your audience. I don't even feel compelled to watch the coverage at night - I can just scan the internet and find out what happened. By delaying the coverage, you're destroying the reason we watch. Your asinine decision has made me see the Olympics as a giant inconvenience, not a worldwide spectacle. I think more about NBC's terrible programming decisions than I do about the actual competition of the Olympics.

I have been watching the Olympics with my family since I was seven years old. You have successfully ruined a family tradition for me, and ruined my love of the Olympics games by making them inconvenient and pointless to watch. You should all be ashamed of yourselves.

Disgustedly Yours,

Sky Bluesky
Seattle, WA

300

It's a small thing, but I'll share it nonetheless.  I just broke 300 calories burned on our elliptical machine.

No, wait a second.  It's not a small thing.  This is kind of a big deal.  

We have an elliptical machine in our house.  (It's this one, if you're curious.  It's fantastic, and also has a relatively small footprint in our office.)  

When we first got it, my goal was to use it two or three times a week.  It typically was, like, once a week.  Twice if I remembered.  There was too much to do, tv shows to watch, books to read, dessert to eat.  I kept not doing it.  I kept finding excuses not to.

And also (cue whining), it was hard!  I was out of shape.  I had asthma.  My legs weren't used to exercise.  When I started, I could only do twenty minutes.  Sometimes, I would have to stop because I was gasping for air, even with regular pulls from my albuterol inhaler.  

But I got stronger.  Twenty turned into twenty-five, and twenty-five turned into thirty.

Then thirty started feeling easy.  I could burn through thirty minutes fairly effortlessly.  Now, I'm doing forty minutes and ... well, I'm not going to say I don't break a sweat, because I sweat like John Edwards in a room full of videographers.  But I can do it, and I can do it comfortably.  

What's also different is that I want to get on the elliptical now.  Every other night, Mrs. B puts Oliver to bed, and those are the nights I work out.  That means three or four times a week, and that's happening every single week.  Last week, I hopped on the machine four times for an hour and 45 minutes total, and burned 762 calories.  One recent week, I did two hours and twenty minutes on the machine, and burned over 1000 calories.  

It's a routine.  It's something I look forward to, not something I'm avoiding at all costs.  I like that.  It's a good feeling.  

Remembering Jane

Jane was here.

May her strength and courage live on in all of us.

A Series of Observations

This morning's conversation with Oliver:

Oliver: "Daddy, monsters spin around all the time. And they never get dizzy. They get hungry!"

Me: "Oh, really. Why?"

O: "They get hungry because they don't have any tomatoes in their tomato soup. So they eat and eat and they get hungrier."

Me: "Oh."

O: "Daddy, did you know that monsters eat tomato soup all the time? It falls out of the sky!"

Me: "It falls out of the sky?"

O: "Yeah. That's why their houses don't have roofs. And did you know that they have tomato soup machines that catch the soup and put into cans?"

Me: "I didn't know that."

O: "They do. Good Monster Freddy's house is a tomato soup factory."

_________________________________________________

A few thoughts. Feel free to ignore this if you just want to enjoy the cuteness without explanation:

• He's been talking about monsters all the time. More on that later. He has an imaginary friend called Good Monster Freddy who he talks about all the time.

• The idea of soup falling out of the sky, obviously, comes from the story Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, which I don't think we've read in a couple of months. He's read the story dozens of times, but we haven't seen the movie yet and I'm worried I'll hate the movie because I like the book so much.

• We also just read The Phantom Toolbooth, which I think is where the idea comes that you keep eating soup and keep getting hungrier. Remember the Subtraction Soup?

• He loves making up wild stories and presenting them to me with "did you know?" It's as if he has this whole secret history of the world, and he keeps quizzing me on it to see if I know as much about it as he does.

Neutral Milk Hotel

I'm listening to Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane, Over the Sea for the first time. Ye gods, this is such a strange and remakable album. I've been hearing for years that this is one of the classic albums of the 1990's, and yet it's such an odd, eccentric thing. The horns are mad, the music goes all fuzzy and out-of-focus at times, there's a singing saw, and the lead singer has this braying, barely musical voice.  

It's fantastic.

It's an addictive album. It's such a guileless, unapologetic work. There's a very clear line of influence between this album and bands like Arcade Fire, Okkervil River, Beirut, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, the Decemberists, maybe even Wilco.  That much is obvious.  This is a touchstone of so much of today's indie rock.    

What a great album. It's a shame it took me a decade to give it a try.  

A Milestone

I weighed in this morning at 199 pounds.  Woo hoo!!!

I broke out in a big grin when I saw that first digit "1" on the scale.  I'm under 200.  That's big. I don't really know the last time I've been under 200.  

I've lost, officially, 11 pounds since I purchased a scale.  Unofficially, I've probably lost at least 20 pounds since I started this whole endeavor.

My pants are much looser.  My shirts don't have that obnoxious bulge at the waistline anymore.  It's definitely noticeable - my wife's commented on it a couple of times.  

My secrets so far are pretty simple.  I log every single bit of food I stick in my mouth.  I work out on the elliptical at least 30 minutes, at least four times a week.  Every morning I remember, I do 10 pushups and 20 situps.  (I did 15 pushups this morning.  It doesn't seem like much, but it's a big step.)  I've also started doing some very mild weight lifting with our puny little 5 lb. barbells.  

The other big support is my beloved wife.  Mrs. B is also cutting back and she's lost ten pounds so far.  It's so much easier with us both doing it - we can compare notes on foods and check in on each other when we haven't been exercising.  Our conversations have gotten rather odd in restaurants, though.  We both tend to whip our iPod touches (she has one, too) and start comparing calories in all of the dinner entrees, trying to find the one that's the leanest and most appetizing.  

I made my spaghetti sauce the other day with turkey sausage.  We bought small baguettes and roasted garlic instead of buying the premade buttery garlic bread.  We've been eating more meatless meals, more lean meals.  It helps a lot, being able to share the burden and the successes.  

My original goal was to lose 30 pounds.  That's going to happen in the next couple of months.  

When that happens, I'll see how I feel and how much farther I want to go.  But for right now, I'm celebrating.  

Ten Years Ago...

Ten years ago...

I had just declared bankruptcy. Moved in with my brother because I had nowhere else to go. I had just gotten a new job which was going really well - my first year in the nonprofit world.

I can't remember exactly what I was doing, but I think my brother and I just stayed in and watched the fireworks on tv. Or else I had gone somewhere to sing karaoke with a bunch of drunken strangers for New Year's, hoping to get lucky.

The WTO protests had just happened in Seattle, and everyone was feeling a little edgy. Seattle's New Year's celebrations were scaled dramatically. The fireworks went off as planned, but Seattle Center was shut down to the public. Some guy named Ahmed Ressam had been caught smuggling explosives on a ferry into Washington State, and he said he was planning to blow up LAX.

What a difference a decade makes. Happy New Year to all of my beloved readers.  

Albums of the Year - 2009

It's the end of the year, so let's do a frigging list!

Sometime, if I get around to it next week, I may put together a list of my favorite albums of the decade. But for now, here's my fave albums of two-diggity-diggity-nine. In no particular order. (That's not really true.)

It's an idiosyncratic list. It's only the albums I actually heard. So while some people thought Grizzly Bear or Animal Collective or Pearl Jam or the Dirty Projectors produced the best album of the year, I never got to hear them all the way through. So I can't judge. (To be fair, the Dirty Projectors and Animal Collective were two bands that I chose not to check out. They weirded me out a little bit.)

Now that I said that, I'm going to break my own rule with the first selection. That being:

Lady Gaga - the Fame Monster

I started the year not knowing who this woman was, and ended up the year fascinated by her. I haven't heard half of this album. Doesn't matter. Lady Gaga is one of the strangest and most interesting people in music today.

Wilco - Wilco (the Album)

Predictable, sure. (After all, they did borrow my name for their previous album.) But I really loved this album. They continue to produce sweet, introspective songs like "One Wing" and "You and I", and added some new classics like "You Never Know" and "I'll Fight." A great album, all the way through.

St. Vincent - Actor

This was such a delightful surprise for me. The combination of those lovely orchestral flourishes and snarling, scuzzy guitar really won me over. Saw her on Austin City Limits, and it did absolutely nothing to remove my crush on Annie Clark.

Taken by Trees -

East of Eden

Another surprise. Waif-like singer goes to Pakistan and ... what? Devours Pakistani music in a Graceland-like colonization? Tosses her vocals onto someone else's music like Jay-Z did with that Panjabi MC song? (Which I love, for the record.) No, instead this is a glorious merging of beautiful songs and sublime instrumentation. A gorgeous merging of styles.

Kitty, Daisy & Lewis - Kitty, Daisy & Lewis

Thanks to TBTL for turning me on to this album. It's pure, old-timey fun music, full of old novelty songs and slide guitars and harmonica and hand clap percussion. Love this one.

thenewno2 - You Are Here

This was a real surprise for me. I listened to it because Dhani Harrison was on Sound Opinions. I was intrigued by the sound of the music, picked up the album, and loved it. It's right in that sweet spot between rock and electronica. Memorable songs, interesting and unexpected hooks. A band to watch.

Lunch Money - Dizzy!

That's right, I put a kid's album on the list. Lunch Money is completely awesome. They write effortlessly hooky songs that your kid can sing and will cause him/her to jump around the house like a maniac. Any band that sings out loud about how much they love their library gets my vote.

Seriously, go listen to these guys. Go listen to "Tiny Dinosaurs" or "I Love My Library" or "It Only Takes One Night to Make a Balloon Your Friend" and see if you're not grinning. I love Lunch Money.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - It's Blitz!

Neko Case - Middle Cyclone

Metric - Fantasies

"Help I'm Alive" and "Sick Muse" were probably some of my most-played songs this year.

Passion Pit - Manners

Dark Was the Night - Various Artists

Biggest disappointment of the year: Green Day - 21st Century Breakdown

I loved American Idiot, and I wanted so badly to love this album. But I've listened to it a couple of times and just gotten bored by it. They took all the wrong lessons from American Idiot. It sounds like show tunes and Hot Topic faux punkrawk and has the whiff of desperation. Omigod, we have a niche! Quick, let's plug something else into the niche before someone else does it! Sorry guys, I ain't buying it.

Books for Dads

I was asked recently if I knew any good storybooks for kids that involved dads. It's a much harder question than you would think.

Fathers are given the short end of the stick in kid's books. Often, mothers are the only parent in sight, and fathers don't even exist in the book. Moms cook the dinner, moms play with their kids, moms tuck in their child at night. Where's dad? Oh, he must be working.

Sadly, when fathers are a part of the book, they're often portrayed as pathetically as they are in sitcoms: bumbling, disinterested, or just not involved at all. Look at the Olivia books, just for one example. What does dad ever do in those books besides read a newspaper?

Or else, they're about dads working. There are an amazing number of books out there that feature dads, but the story involves dad going away for a business trip and how much the kids will miss daddy when he's gone. So we're present in our absence.

And then there's all the divorced dad books - "Weekend with Daddy"-type stories. And I'm not complaining, because for all the dads out there in that situation, it's great for them to have something that reflects their reality. But there's not enough books that reflect the other reality - real fathers, as a part of the daily routine in the house just like moms are.

But there are a number of books that show dads in a positive light. I especially love finding books where dads are the caretakers - we tuck our kids in at night, we solve problems, we comfort our kids when they're upset. Because that's what we do, in real life, all the time. Here's a partial list of my favorites, along with suggestions I've gotten from friends. I can't vouch for all the books, but I wanted to provide the longest list possible. Let me know about your favorite books about dads in the comments, and I'll keep the list going.

Night Driving, by John Coy and Peter McCarty. This is my #1 favorite book about dads. It's the story of a boy and his dad driving cross-country at night. The pictures are beautiful and the bond between the father and son is really touching.

Other suggestions:

• Owl Moon - Jane Yolen
• The Ice Palace - Deborah Blumenthal
• Baby Brains (and the other related Baby Brains books) - Simon James
• The Gruffalo's Child (okay, it's about a monster and his dad, but that
• counts, right?) - Julia Donaldson
• Daddies are for Catching Fireflies - Harriet Ziefert
• Daddy Makes the Best Spaghetti - Anna Grossnickle Hines
• The Angelina Ballerina books
• The Lilly the Mouse books - Kevin Henkes (Henkes always does a great
• job giving dads and moms equal time)
• Enemy Pie - Derek Munson (another great bonding book about dads and sons)
• Born in the Gravy - Denys Cazet
• The Summer My Father was Ten - Pat Brisson
• Kevin and His Dad - Irene Smalls
• Danny, the Champion of the World - Roald Dahl (probably for older
• kids)
• If I Were Your Father - Margaret Park Bridges
• The Trumpet and the Swan - E.B. White
• Horton Hears a Who and Horton Hatches the Egg - Dr. Seuss (not about dads exactly, but Horton = nurturing male role model)
• Knuffle Bunny and Knuffle Bunny Too (where the dads walk their kids to school, and they end up saving the day!)

This is meant to be a partial list. Tell me in the comments about the books I missed. What are your favorite books featuring real dads?

More suggestions from readers:

Two Old Potatoes and Me (suggested by the author himself, John Coy!)

"Two Old Potatoes and Me is the story of a girl and her father planting potatoes and I think you'd enjoy both the story and the art."

On Our Way Home - suggested by anonymous commenter

"An outstanding book about a little bear and his Daddy on a hike. No mentions of absence or anything other than special time with Dad. For a bonus, Daddy tucks the little bear in at the end."

Some Dogs Do - suggested by JustineR

"'Some Dogs Do' is about a little dog who has a bad day, and his father is the comforting one. Mother dog doesn't even have a speaking role."

A Christmas Present to Remember

I have to share the amazing feat I just witnessed.

Oliver got a lovely present from his grandmother - a copy of "The Night Before Christmas." It's one of those books that Hallmark sells where you can record your own voice reading the book. It's pretty clever. The pages all have sensors on them, so every time you turn the page, her voice begins reading the words on the page.

And he loves it. He's listened to it probably a dozen times in the last two days, over and over again. And one time, we saw him listening to it, and we noticed something interesting. After grandma was done reading her page, he would repeat everything she just said, word for word.

So tonight, he listened to it one more time as his bedtime story. And then he had me read it. But here's what happened. He started reciting the story along with me, so I started reading lines and then stopping to let him finish the line.

And then he took over. He started reciting the poem from the names of the reindeer - "On Dasher! On Dancer!" - all the way to the end, on his own. I didn't have to prompt him once. We just watched him, jaws hanging open, while he delivered the entire poem all the way to the end. All I could do was turn the pages, one by one, and stare at him. He didn't skip a single word.

That is a complicated poem, full of long sentences and quirky words. And he just rolled right through it, like he was doing Mary Had a Little Lamb.   It was one of the most astonishing things I have ever seen.

Toasted Marshmallow Confusion

I ordered a vanilla latte, and the guy obviously grabbed the wrong bottle of syrup. So I ended up unexpectedly with a toasted marshmallow latte.

The taste was at once bewildering - delightfully pleasurable, and completely disarming at the same time. Every time I took a sip, my mouth would react like "Mmmmm. Wait, what the hell is going on here?" The flavor was that cottony delicious sugar rush of marshmallow, with just a hint of charcoal and caramelization. It was a strong enough flavor to completely overwhelm the taste of coffee. I don't know what kind of chemicals they put into that syrup to generate those sensations, but it's amazingly lifelike.

Drinking a toasted marshmallow out of a cup feels completely wrong to the senses. It's like petting a shadow on the head, or tucking a sunbeam under your pillow, or listening to the pages of a book.

That being said, it was delicious.

Workout Playlist - Dec. 6, 2009

A brutal workout today. I recently created a 40-minute routine on the elliptical machine, which might not sound like a lot to you hardcore workouty types. But it's absolutely punishing to me. And at the same time, incredibly satisfying. I'm dripping with sweat and endorphins right now.

Anyway, the playlist today was just fantastic.

Open Letter (to a Landlord) - Living Colour

Cult of Personality - Living Colour

Innervision - System of a Down

Zero - Smashing Pumpkins

Ashes in the Fall - Rage Against the Machine

Bonzo Goes to Bitburg - Ramones

Break the Grip of Shame - Paris

Date with the Night - Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Loud, crushing old-school rawk music full of roaring guitars and screaming vocals. The two exceptions were hip hop songs that both hit like a punch to the jaw. The Kanye song is the perfect right-in-your face song, one of his best. Jagged samples and a weaving, swaggering delivery by Kanye. And that Paris song is just perfection. Great flow, military-precision scratching, relentless beat. One of the greatest rap songs produced in the '80s, maybe ever.

Amanda Knox and Meredith Kercher

I know very little about this case.  I have avoided stories of this story feverishly, even though it is a story that touches many of my neighbors.  Even though the accused lives in the same city, the same neighborhood, as my family.  However, I feel called to talk about it because it is so close to home, literally and figuratively.  

I have avoided this story the way I avoid all stories of murder:  gruesome murder, celebrity murder, exploitative stories about murder, tragic stories about murder.  I avoid these stories.  I don't watch movies that talk cavalierly about murder, or movies like Pulp Fiction that use dead bodies as a punch line.  I wince at the way murder is treated in this country, and especially in the news.

So I did not seek out and I do not wish to know more about the Amanda Knox story:  about her alibi, her claims of innocence.  I do not wish to hear the cries from her family that she could not possibly have done something like this.  I do not want to know.  I don't follow murder stories.  

My brother was murdered fourteen years ago, you see.  (Some of my longtime readers have heard me talk about this before.)  We found out weeks after it had happened.  They found my father's address in his personal effects and were able to track him down, and they called him to identify the body of his son.  

One of the killers was found and arrested, years later.  He went to trial.  I was asked to attend as a witness.  I saw photos of my brother's body, taken at the morgue, depicting the blows that ended his life.  I saw the evidence of what had been done to him.  I saw these things and I wish that I never had.

I saw the man who was accused of murdering my brother.   I heard the prosecutor and a witness to the crime describe the things that had been done to end my brother's life.  I heard his attorney offer alibis, explanations, reasons why their client could not possibly have done these horrible things.

I met his family, the murderer's family.  They couldn't understand how such a mistake could have happened.  They were upset, angry, confused, and they know their son was innocent.  They just knew it.  He wasn't that kind of person. 

He was found guilty by a jury of his peers, and was sentenced to life in prison.  I have not seen him since that trial and I don't know if I will ever see his face again, except in my dreams, except when I want to think about my brother and instead, I see the ruddy face of the man who took his life.

So no, I don't want to know more about Amanda Knox' situation.  I don't want to know the holes in the prosecution's case.  I don't want to know the alternative theories of how the murder transpired.  It's not that I dislike Ms. Knox or that I've prejudged her.  I just don't want to know any more.  I can't do it.  I choose to just close my eyes and let the system do its job.   

I know this, however.  I know that Italy is a nation of laws, a nation with a legitimate government.  I know that Knox' trial was not conducted by reading goat entrails or casting runes.  I know that her trial was carried out in a legitimate court.  And if the jury said that she was guilty, then I have to believe that she was guilty.  A person was murdered.  Meredith Kercher's family deserves justice.  I will not, I dare not question the judgment of that Italian jury.  It is not my right.  None of us has that right except the judge and the men and women who made up that jury.  That's how it works.   

I believe that the jury who convicted my brother's murder carried out their role and meted out justice.  I believe that the jury who convicted Amanda Knox did the same.  I have to believe that.  There are so many murders in this country and around the world that go unsolved, their perpetrators left to roam free, the families of the victims left with gaping wounds in their hearts.  I have to believe that justice was carried out here, and I do believe that.  It is disrespectful to Meredith Kercher's family, to that jury, and to the entire country of Italy to claim otherwise.  

And that's all I can say about that.  

And so it begins...

I bought a scale. Yep, finally.

So you're probably wondering - how do I know I'm overweight if I don't own a scale? What was all this sturm-und-dranging about if I don't even know how much I weigh?

I didn't owned a scale for ten years, until now. The truth is that I was relying on doctor's scales, which of course means I was being weighed with clothes on. And my big ol' clodhopper shoes, which probably weigh two pounds each. But still, I was weighing in 10-15 pounds heavier than I had ever been before, even in a doctor's office, even with all my clothes on.

So I bought a scale so that I could actually weigh myself daily and measure my progress. Now I have an actual baseline of where I'm at and how far I need to go.

And like I'm said, I'm serious about this. So I'm 'fessing up right here. This morning, I weighed myself first thing in the morning, right before hopping into the shower.

My actual verified weight, as of 6:00 this morning, was ...

ulp ...

210 pounds.

I want to get down to 190. That's twenty pounds by next June.

My original goal was to lose 30 pounds, back when I thought I weighed more than I did. I'm going to see how quickly I can shed the first 20, and I'll see if I want to go for the extra ten.

___________________________________________

I realize I've started this diet, or whatever, at the worst possible time - right during the overeating holidays, Thanksgiving and Christmas. I was relatively good during Thanksgiving, largely aided by the fact that I was sick as a dog with a chest cold. But I was careful with the turkey, doled out my portions and weighed them dutifully on our little kitchen scale, and plugged them into my LoseIt app. At the end of the day, I only went over my goal by only 75 calories. I considered that a good day.

I was under for the week of Thanksgiving by over 400 calories, and that's pretty good. Again, I was sick, but I'll take it. Progress is progress.

Hatters Gotta Hat

I just got a comment on an old blog post. I wrote a smart-alecky post about some clown driving around with a "Hustler" bumper sticker. The commenter wrote - and let me quote here -

Don't be a hatter

A hatter? I'm not supposed to be a hatter? I thought he was making some kind of tricky allusion to "Alice in Wonderland," and then I realized what he was saying. He misspelled "hater."

So I'm not supposed to be a hater. This word gets thrown around all the time - don't be a hater, don't hate, why you gotta hate on blah blah blobbity blah. If you don't like a tv show, you're a hater. If you don't like a song by Katy Perry, you're hating on her. If you don't like someone's outfit, someone's music, someone's style, a book, a movie, a car, what-the-fuck-ever, you're a hater.

Well, okay then. Screw it. I'm a hater.

I hate dumbass people who drive around with "Hustler" bumper stickers, because Hustler was a sleazy porno mag long before it was some kind of euphemism for "hard-working entrepreneur." Anyone stupid enough to wear a "Hustler" bumper sticker is not a hustler, they're probably just some douchebag who picked up the bumper sticker while they were picking up their Recommended Daily Allowance of Cheetos and beer at the local Circle K. If you're a hustler, you don't have to say it. People know.

While we're at it, I hate the term "hustler" in general. The term got popular because of hip hop songs as a way of saying "someone doing whatever they need to do to survive." Most of the time, that means - at least, in the songs' worldview - selling drugs, doing petty crime, robberies, pimping, etc. That's what a hustler means.

I don't want to be a hustler. I want to be someone who works hard. I don't call myself a hustler, and I sure as fuck don't call myself a pimp.

I hate that "pimp" has become a compliment. Pimps are criminals. Pimps are not to be looked up to. And I'm going to just guess here, but I'd bet 99.9% of the people who call themselves pimps (read: white kids who listen to rap) have even never seen a pimp outside of a music video or a movie screen.

Other Things to Hate:

I hate stupidity.

I hate that I get breaking news alerts about people whose only fame comes from being in a reality show.

I hate bad grammar. Even on Twitter. Even on Facebook. Hate it.

I hate people who don't take the time to proofread a four-word post.

I hate. I'm a hater. Everyone hates something, and that doesn't make you a hater. It makes you human.

This Time, For Real

I weigh more than I've ever weighed in my life. I can no longer accept this. I've got to get serious about losing weight.

I've made some half-hearted, haphazard attempts to lose weight in the past. I've never taken it seriously before. Not really.

I exercise, when I think of it. We own an elliptical machine, so I don't even to go down to a health club to exercise. But I only use it about once a week. Twice a week, on a good week. When I feel like it. When it doesn't feel like too much of a hassle to get up off the couch.

I've pretended to watch my portions before, but not really. I'll skimp at lunch, only to serve myself an extra scoop of ice cream on dessert. I'll open a bag of tortilla chips and just eat handful after handful, not even thinking about how many calories I'm cramming in my mouth. One handful just leads to another, and then another.

I eat seconds for dinner, just about every night. I finish the leftovers on Oliver's plate. If there's an extra spoonful of mashed potatoes in the pan, I'll finish it off.

I went to the doctor last week for a freak injury. They took my weight, and I discovered I'm twenty pounds heavier than what's listed on my driver's license.

I don't know what I expected, but I didn't expect that. I thought I'd been watching what I eat. I thought I was doing all right. I was wrong.

And the thing is, I knew it. I'd been denying the truth even as it stared me straight in the face. I've gained weight around my waist. A noticeable amount of weight. I can't fit into pants I wore a year ago. I had to buy new pants in a larger size when I went back to work in August. There are few things more humiliating than realizing, while buying pants, that you are no longer the size that you thought you were.

I have more asthma flareups now. There's a connection. I'm carrying too much weight. I'm having pain in my feet now. There might be a connection there, too.

I can't chase Oliver around the park for ten minutes without getting winded. I HATE that.

So I'm getting serious now. I'm using a program on my iPod touch called LoseIt! to track my daily calories and what I'm burning from exercise. (That has been a fascinating and humbling experience. More on that soon.)

I've worked out on the elliptical twice in the last three days. I started a small additional exercise routine - situps and pushups every morning. Right now, it's only ten of each, and I'm sure that I look awful doing them. But it's something. It's a start.

I want to lose thirty pounds by next summer. I'm not going to post my weight here, in order to preserve a bit of my dignity. But that's my goal. Thirty pounds, a pound a week. (And no, I don't own a scale. I'll take care of that soon.)

I'll keep you posted as to my progress on this blog. If I go more than a week without talking about it, remind me. This is serious this time. I have to get myself down to a dignified weight. I have to do this, for my sake, for my health, for Oliver and for Mrs. B. I have to do this.

The Smoking Gun

Guy shoots up Fort Hood in Texas. Kills 13, wounds 30 more. How could we have possibly prevented this? Was it caused by depression? Anti-military fervor? He's a Muslim - was he a terrorist? (You know how those people are.)

How could we have stopped this?

The next day, a shooting in Florida. One dead, five injured in a highrise building. Oh, but this is totally unrelated to the Texas shootings. That was a military base, this was in a place of business. No connection whatsoever.

Last week, a police officer was shot and killed here in Seattle, shot in his own police car. But undoubtedly, it was unrelated to the other shootings. Different place, different motive. No connection whatsoever.

Yesterday, there was a shooting in the town where my wife works. Attempted murder-suicide, according to news reports. But of course, that had nothing at all to with the other shootings. No connection whatsoever.

Tonight, a man will be executed for committing a series of high-profile shootings in the Washington D.C. area. Any connection to the other crimes? Oh no, of course not. This was a serial killer, a psychopath, totally unpredictable. His crime was an aberration.

There's no connection at all.

Bullshit.

Here's the pattern that I see. Shooting, shooting, shooting, shooting, and another shooting. The connection is guns. The connection is unmistakeable, unavoidable, and undeniable.

On the day that the Fort Hood shooting occurred, dozens of other shootings also happened and most of them never even made the news. Shootings in this country are an epidemic, and we're so inured to them that all we do is shake our heads when another one happens. What a shame, we say. Another senseless crime. Another unstoppable crime. We throw up our hands - what can you do?

Here's what you can do. You can call your member of Congress, call your city council, call your town's mayor. Ask them what they're doing to reduce gun violence, and make them get specific. Call the president and tell him to make gun violence a priority.

What can we do about it? Support sensible gun laws in your state and in federal law, like closing the gun show loophole.

What can we do? Support local organizations that are fighting the scourge of guns (we have a great local organization called Washington Ceasefire), or support the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

Don't just turn your head. One hundred thousand people are shot in this country each year, and over ten thousand people every year die from gun violence. Our children, our neighbors, our families are all suffering from this plague. According to the Center for Disease Control's Leading Causes of Death Reports, from age birth until age 65 firearms are consistently among the top ten leading causes of death in our communities. And among our young people aged 15-24 firearms rank in the top three leading causes of death. Firearms take twice as many lives as AIDS does each year. (Thanks to the Brady Campaign and Washington CeaseFire for the statistics.)

These are preventable crimes, but we have to be brave enough to fight in order to prevent them.

ACORN Falls

“This is an investigation of everything — Acorn, the national organization, the local organization and all of its affiliated entities,” said David Caldwell, an assistant attorney general.

ACORN's offices in Louisiana are being raided as I write this. ACORN is going up in flames, and this time, it's for the right reason.

No, I'm not talking about Encyclopedia Brown the pimp and his sorry-ass Saved by the Bell reject wannabe hooker buddy.

The videotapes are bullshit, and you can quote me on that. They're preposterous, hucksterism, pointless, juvenile. This investigation is about the epic mismanagement of a national organization. And I believe it's the right investigation, for the right reasons.

They're targeting the embezzlement of around $1 million - maybe as high as $5 million, according to reports I've read - by the brother of ACORN's founder, Wade Rathke. ACORN has had a problem for a while, apparently, and only the publicizing of the crime made it clear how completely screwed up the organization was.

I'm not a lawyer, but it seems to me that having one guy with as much power as Wade Rathke had was a situation bound to lead to disaster. He was clearly getting involved in things without the knowledge of the board. (Why do I say that? Most of the board's members didn't even know about the embezzlement - or the secret "settlement" - until years after the fact. Years.) When all power is consolidated in the hands of one person, and when that person stops believing he has to be accountable to anyone - funders, board members, other officers - then trouble is bound to happen.

Then, just think about the fact that his brother was working high up in the organization as well, and had access to the organization's bank accounts. Recipe for disaster, I'm telling you.

ACORN's trying to set its house in order, but there have been years and years of damage that they have to undo. The embezzlement happened in 1999 and 2000. This was hidden for eight years. Now they're being investigated for tax fraud, and the investigators are also trying to determine how much money was actually embezzled. Remember, ACORN was a tax-exempt organization, run largely on individual contributions and foundation support. They were operating for the public's benefit. When you steal from a nonprofit, you are stealing from the public. In ACORN's case, Dale Rathke was effectively stealing from the very low-income families that they were trying to help.

ACORN's funding is drying up. Foundations don't want to touch them with a ten-foot pole until they can be absolutely certain that their money is going to be handled correctly. This is what should happen. This is the natural repercussion of their poor management.

And now they're being investigated by the state of Louisiana - again, not because of the pimptastic videotapes, but because of their outrageous financial mismanagement. Maybe the organization will be able to answer all of the questions and sever themselves of the taint of Rathke's leadership. Maybe they'll survive this, maybe they won't. But at least this time, the questions that are being asked are the right questions.