Category Archives: General Discussion

Prenatal Advisory: Explicit Lyrics

Have I mentioned how diligent I am with this “blog” thing?

I’m like a wizard.

Who’s always late.

And boring.

So – My wife and I have a teenager now, and for all intents and purposes, he’s a pretty good kid.

He works hard in school. He’s sociable. He’s handsome and funny.

Basically all the things I wasn’t at 13.

Which is cool, because a parent should want their kids to have a better life than them. We do.

This card I have says that’s what I believe.

Apparently he was swearing a bit at school. Nothing shocking, just a few things that we as a modern, 21st Century civilization have come to deem as tolerable in public.

No big deal. I can handle that.

My 9 year old daughter, however, is a different matter.

I love her to death. She’s a sweetheart, who is generally really good and helpful most of the time.

Only every once in awhile, does she absolutely drive her mother and I right around the bend.

And this past weekend, while I was home visiting from a course, she said something that was kind of, well, unbelievable.

Now I don’t dare repeat it here, but while holding a pencil, sitting in the van as I was getting coffee, she said something to the effect of “depressurizing the contents of below average sized male genitalia”.

Yeah.

I don’t even think Dennis Farina (May he rest in peace, the f***ing f***ball) would ever come up with this line.

Part of me was furious. Part of me was doubled over. But the part of me right in the middle (specifically the heart part) felt a little bit bad, because it is entirely possible that through my decision-making paradigm as a parent, I might have let her think that a statement such as the one she made, may be not that bad.

We immediately corrected said behaviour, as parents do. She teared up. It never happened again.

But I still think about it. It still bugs me. Not that she said it. But that she figured it wasn’t that bad to say in the first place.

Recently, a friend who has a relatively new baby has been picking my brain for advice about parenting for guys, and I have tried to steer him in a positive direction, i hope.

But if there is something I can share based on my ongoing growth as a dad, a father and as a human being, it’s that our children can stupendous mirrors for the kinds of people we are, and reflect back the things we do and say.

So please – be bloody clear about what you want to have staring back at you.

Otherwise you may unexpectedly find yourself doubled over from a hit below the belt, with your heart in your hands.

I Write A Blog Now. Blog’s Are Cool.

I was always writing a blog. Just not in a timely manner.

Listen. This is the year of reliving my past.

I haven’t died. I’m not pouring emo-statically over old vhs tapes of sisters flipping off swings, or fathers falling in tubs.

I’m being force fed a plethora of repackaged, re-constituted, watered-down, smarmalade-laden, well loved and oft-quoted chunks from my formative media-tainment years.

I’m having, it would seem, a bit of a hard time with it. it feels like I got shoved into a brightly lit column of “This Is Your Life”.

Here’s the rub – Ignorance really winds me up. Like – “I can’t be bothered” ignorance. I’ll explain.

See – here’s the thing. When I was a kid, I had to work a little harder to get the next scrap of happy happy joy joy input from my favorite characters and stories. Cue Whine and Camembert. 1000 tiny violins a’ violining.

Episodes seemed to take forever to arrive. I had only my toys and my dad to bounce my ideas off of, and I only now appreciate his exceedingly generous patience.

I READ Tv guide. Cover to cover. Every. Single. Week.

And I developed a humble and hallowed respect for those stories that found their starts in more classical works, or were at least older than me. I delighted in their unveiling.

So I made the effort to learn about them. I enjoyed the history. The time and care given to the formation of the background. The colour and the shape.

And here we are in 2013.

The internet has effectively levelled the once impenetrable wall of time and frustration for those waiting to immerse themselves in their shared worlds of wonder. It’s here. it’s all here. Piles and piles of it. All for you.

However – in it’s place has arisen a culture of instant gratification and must-needs-have-now demand that has chopped away some of the enjoyment of “waiting til the folks are up to open the presents under the tree”-iness.

It is entirely possible i am being an ass, shaking my cane at young uns, gripping my towel and straightening my decorative vegetable in a harumph.

But now – yes, even NOW – I can see a new take on an old theme, appreciate the vision (even if i disagree with it). But I still take the time to learn about it. To immerse myself in this new tome. In some cases, I’ve even been pleasantly surprised, and my faith restored in the sacred and the wounded word.

But I shake my head. I crease my brow. And I feel a little sadder. Because a lot more often lately, I am having to come to terms with the fact that what may have been made before, may be made again. And theres a lot of folks that just don’t care about what was made before.

George Santayana said “Those who can not remember the past, are doomed to repeat it”. This isn’t just something to say. It’s a mantra. It’s a way of life. And it applies to our hearts, our minds, our science, our politics, our art.

I pass on my love of rich worlds of various creation to my children. I show them the things they want to see, and some things they don’t. I guide them through the past, share with them the present, and marvel with them at the future.

At some point, they will continue the journey without me.

But i hope, if nothing else, they will have learned to appreciate the world around them. Enjoy the world in front of them. And are thankful of the world behind them.

Otherwise, I should really get off my ass, make like a tree, and reverse the polarity of the neutron flow.

Yo Dawg, I heard you like philosophical meanderings of an introspective nature….

I have a morbid fascination with the concept of time. Our complete obedience and subjugation to it, perceived or otherwise.

We are all time-travellers, after a fashion, we are just travelling forward. Albeit very, VERY slowly. And the impact we have on events can’t be felt or acknowledged as it occurs, but much later. It’s like the worst plot ever for a science fiction film.

We live immersed in an ocean of perception and experience. We order those elements into finite cubes that make sense to our three dimensional brain. We stack those cubes in orders of importance or priority, giving preference to those cubes we cherish more.

And everyday, we are stacking. We stack them in groups, or pairs, or in great conglomerations with those we love. The cubes grow and shrink in number and size. They stretch out towards the horizon. They fit inside our pocketses. They hide us, define us, catch us by surprise on a daily basis like Pikka Birds at sunrise.

We tend to them with loving, fretful vigilance. We are patient, and terrified. And the time just sidles by.

So another cube I place. Another stone to step on. Another marker for the miles.

It’s funny. We spend so much time waiting for things, and then when things happen, we wonder what the rush was. The new reality “You” looks back and says “Well of course this is what it feels like, what did you expect?”.

You know what they say.

Wherever you go, there you are.

(Facepalm) Past Me is waving at Future Me like an idiot. Everyone’s watching. It’s a little embarrassing.

Mildly Protest in a Calm, Civil Manner Against the Machine

So I’m sitting in the bath, sloshing about in all my corpulent wonder , when I think to myself “Hey Self, you’ve never written a blog in a bath before!” (Alliteration:10 pts to Gryffindor).

So now I’m writing this blog entry from the bath.

It’s somewhat humorous considering I don’t even really have a specific topic to chat about, as the regular throng can attest to (Sarcasm – I’m also a cunning linguist)

But I would like to point out that bathtubs, as a rule, aren’t really engineered for comfort. I know the average women (I can’t use my wife as an example, as she far exceeds the average woman – see what I did there guys??) can spend years in a bath. I likely could too, if I didn’t usually end up resembling some kind of grumpy, red-faced Mr Potato Head with all of his bits in the wrong places, playing aqua Twister with the plastic tub surround.

So I sit and soak, a myriad of limbs jutted uncomfortably up against the ceramic veneer whilst shifting the other foot under the water, casting a tepid wave of water back towards my chest.

I curse. I moan. My knees and back ache for all the soothing warm water they won’t inhabit again.

And just when I think I’ve found the right mix between function and joint numbing compromise, my foot spasms and kicks the desktop monitor into the tub.

Well, shit.

I’ve got to be kidding me……

Breaking News Flash!! Apparently i haven’t stopped growing up.

Let me be frank: I really only just figured something out about myself, and while it should have been one of those earth-shattering revelations that only comes along once in a blue moon, it wasn’t that at all.

I wasn’t surprised. Not even in the slightest.

I stumbled across something about a former colleague and it brought into sharp relief what that person has been up to versus what i’ve been up to since year X.

Whilst puffing upon one of my Christmas cigars, I realized the crux of my conundrum: This person has drive. They had a vision for themselves and continued, long after we parted company, to strive for said vision. And I have been hopping trains.

I am very capable at almost anything i come across. But nothing grabs me. Not in the way that it did this person. And the irony is at the time of our shared experiences, I would have said that I was deeply passionate about the focus of my life at that time.

Here’s the catch:

I’m actually ok with this realization.

I mean I really like my life. I love my wife and kids. I am happy in my vocation. And while I still entertain thoughts of dabbling in past distractions, the get-up-and-go to actually bring it out of the Matrix inside my head is just a little more work than I want to put forward.

All this to say: I think i got my shit together. More to follow.

You may now return to your regularly scheduled bloggraming.

Straight Up

I promise to always be as up front with you as much as i humanly can. If I am going to hand off the hot potato, and i know the music is about to end, you will be the first to know.

I know, you may not always like what I have to say, but at least you’ll know I didn’t bullshit you, or waste your time.

Even if it means that there is a heaving, writhing mass of tentacles and teethy death waiting for you beneath the sand, I’m gonna give you a heads up. Be it hand-written countdown while sitting behind the wheel, to a college kid hucking himself voluntarily into your wood chipper, you will, from me, have advance warning of the unpleasantness.

Cuz man, I REALLY hate that shit.

That’s all I wanted to say.

Ermagherd! Wrerter’s Blerk!

New project!!

2500 to 2800 word essay. Open concept. Cool topic. One that I am exceedingly comfortable with.

This the part of the movie where I hit the proverbial wall.

I gave myself a bit of time to suss out what direction i wanted to head in, but unfortunately, as with some of my early attempts at script writing, fits and starts are all I’m getting.

And here I find myself again, where fine ham abounds like a banquet of literary pork. That last sentence just slipped right out like a well hawked loogie. So did that one.

So more than anything, today’s morsel is more for me than you. It’s my warm-up. Just enough to get me moving forward.

There. I feel better already. Eyes on the prize. Ready to rock. Send me in, Coach. Totally, 100% foc- SQUIRREL!

Epic Flail…..

So It’s Summer again. Yay. The World keeps burnin’.

My two oldest have turned the wheel one more time and are cresting at 12 and 10, which, to be fair, blows my frickin’ mind.

How did I suddenly become a dad to almost teenagers? I barely qualify as an adult myself, let alone fulfill the required prerequisites for giving them the skinny on all-that-is-to-come….

Along the way, however, I recognize I must have not screwed it up to badly. All of my children appear to be relatively normal and well adjusted, emotionally and socially. They play. They fight. They laugh at farts. On the whole – normal.

And despite the near-insane lengths they seem to drive me from time to time, they are pretty good kids. I much prefer them to other children.

I just hope I can continue to not screw it up. Mind you, I haven’t forced them to choose between The Jedi or Starfleet, so the jury is still out. No kid should have to make a decision of that magnitude.

 

Motivation……

Somewhere, in some parallel universe, there is a version of me fastidiously hammering out golden streams of intellectual honeydew, blogging and tweeting to the throbbing masses, plucking snickers-level wordy goodness right out of the air.

Day in, as well as day out, this faster, sleeker, dare i say “streamlined” version of my very own self is manic and feverish, unleashing his critical think-funk upon the interweblets, undeterred by the regular life stuff tripping him up.

He is a virtuoso at time management. He is connected and tuned in. He is the epitome of bluetooth/wireless/virtual excellence. He is all of these things, and for good measure, keeps a potato peeler in his back pocket.

I happen to outshine him in two respects.

First, I am slightly funnier.

and secondly, I am way gooder with words and stuff.

I’ll try to be here more often.

Teh Internets ….. I can has headaches?

As we skip to and fro through the holiday season, enjoying the company of family and friends, an ugly truth has shown up asking to park itself on the couch.

Very recently, I found myself embroiled in a matter with someone close to me over something that was made available publicly. The individuals right to make it public is not the issue. Its graphic nature and the fact that it was made available in a social media forum, where the individual in question has also connected with my son, is. I’m being purposely obtuse BTW.

My wife felt compelled to comment on the extremely disturbing image, and that perhaps it probably shouldn’t have been put up at all. Then the crapulesence (not a real word) began to flow.

A handful of this individuals “friends” popped on to give their advice on how we should parent as well as our freedom to simply “hide” the posting in question. In short, if we couldn’t “handle” it, then we shouldn’t be there in the first place.

So here’s where I get angry, and seriously consider drowning all social media – The average age of these commentators is i believe in the early to mid 20’s. None of them appear to have children of their own. Nor do they appear to have a firm grasp of proper sentence structure, or a working understanding of punctuation. That aside, not once did the individual who put up the initial post ever respond, either to private message, public comment, or personal text.

I think that pisses me off more than anything.

There is a trend i have noticed with younger people. They don’t necessarily consider the wider effects of what they do when they are online. While sites such as Reddit offer a plethora of subject matter to sink your teeth into, it is organized in such a way that you won’t be offended when you log on to the page for the first time. You have to go looking for the sick and twisted shit. Also, the average poster seems to be a wee bit more mature in terms of what they have to say. My opinion.

Another example is Twitter, which limits you to 140 characters to illuminate your audience with, and provide links to the stuff you want to share.

Facebook was originally intended as a means to making connecting with family and friends easier. Out of this grew the current model, which includes game hosting, groups and fan pages. If you really feel strongly about something, you can create a group, and then invite those people you think will be responsive to your message.

Lastly, we have this page right here. A Blog. You very own personal digital diary. You can put what you’d like and be prepared for the good, bad and the ugly that comes your way as a result of what you write about.

What doesn’t get talked about in this new media age is personal responsibility. Even though you have the freedom to get your message out there, you still need to consider the number one rule when dealing with people: “Know your audience”. If you think there might be something offensive about what you are wanting to say, or show, then factor that into how you present it.

I have for the most part not had any issues with the stuff I’ve seen on the gamut of social media, however, lately, i have become increasingly fed up with a creeping trend of “shock for shock’s sake” and a host of attack-like commentary by complete strangers. This is where the concept of personal responsibility could really be helpful.

Dare I say – is it time for me to retreat from the social world? Because I have to tell you, I really don’t need the headache.