The Fobcave

$50 OBO - Two children, less than five years old

2008-07-14T19:29:00.000-07:00

This morning at 5:30 after Little Dude climbed out of his playpen for the twenty-fourth time of the night, I got back in bed and mentally composed a bitterly humorous (if not very original) post about how I wanted to sell my children.

At 7:30 I gave up on the idea of going back to sleep and sat down at my computer to work. One of the first web pages I came across in the course of my work was a news article about a woman who was being tried for the murder of her daughter. Among the evidence against her were journal entries she'd written complaining about how parenting is stressful and sometimes she wished she could be free of her children. Now granted in this case there was also DNA evidence pinning her to the horrible crime, but I decided not to write that post I'd been planning anyway.

I will admit, though, that my children have been causing me a lot of stress over the past few days. For several months I've been looking forward to this month-long vacation, but now a week into it I'm ready to be in my own home. I'm enjoying spending the time with family and friends in Utah, and even last week I was thinking about how so long as I have my computer I feel like I'm at home (and I'm taking my computer everywhere I go because I need it for my job), but the problem is that the kids aren't so easily adaptable. They're stressed out by all this moving around and the interruption of their routine, and I don't deal well with stressed out children. I get grumpy and yell at them to stop screaming.

We spent last week with my sister, which was nice except for her Stairs of Death, and now we'll be at my mom's for three weeks. There's not quite as much space here, but I'm hoping we'll be able to get into some kind of routine and some sense of normalcy, before we rip them back out of that routine and take them to Grandma and Grandpa's in Vegas for a week and then our new home in Davis.

I'd like to have happy, calm children, but I'll settle for a good night's sleep and Little Dude staying in his bed.

An hour and ten escapes into tonight, I don't have much hope of that happening.

A Nietschean Moment with LD Fob

2008-07-05T19:24:00.000-07:00

Little Dude pointing to the wall where a Minerva Teichert painting was until yesterday:

"Jesus all gone."

Changing Plans

2008-07-03T22:59:00.000-07:00

According to the original plan, we would have been in Utah by now. We were supposed to be out of student family housing by the end of June so we made plans to load up our moving cubes on June 28th, then drive to Utah while all our stuff got shipped to Sacramento, where it'll be stored until we get there in August. The only problem is that we neglected to inform the moving cube people of this plan early enough, and as it turns out a lot of people move at the end of June. In a college town--imagine that.

So the earliest they could get us a moving cube was the first weekend of July, but sorry, they don't do deliveries on Saturdays, so nothing till Monday the 7th. So I begged and pleaded with the student family housing people, and they reluctantly agreed to let me pay rent for an extra week. Meanwhile, I've been stressing about moving on a Monday because it's hard to get people to help during the middle of a weekday and my job requires me to work four hours a day Monday thru Friday, which is kind of hard to do when I'm driving across Idaho.

Then today the moving cube people called and said Hey guess what we can deliver your cubes on Saturday how do you feel about that? So with two days' notice we're moving our moving day up by two days and, as it turns out, both Foxy and I are happy about it. We were at the point where we couldn't do much more packing until it was closer to zero hour anyway, and as much as we'll miss Seattle and our friends here, we're ready to get this move--at least the first part of it--out of the way.

Incidentally, if you live in the Seattle area and are looking for something to do Saturday afternoon, say between 3:30 and 6:30, shoot me an email and I'll see if I can find something for you.

Bas(k)e(t)ball

2008-07-02T08:59:00.001-07:00

I am about as sports-ignorant as they come, but even I know that this is not what a baseball uniform looks like...
...and that's not how you spell "basketball."

Do All You Can

2008-06-29T10:55:00.000-07:00

The following letter is to be read by local leaders to their Fob congregations today, Sunday, June 29, 2008:

Dear Friends of Ben,

It has come to our attention that throughout the United States activists are fighting to corrupt traditional marriage and in doing so attacking the very fabric of our society. Today we ask you to do all you can to fight back, to ensure that the only legitimate definition of marriage is our definition, because it is a well-known fact that two different definitions of the same thing cannot coexist in the same country, or the entire universe will implode. It is for this reason that we ask you to set aside your ability to think for yourselves so you can campaign for the following political cause that we decree as just and holy.

As you know, in the recent past activist judges have legitimized so-called same-haircolor "marriages." This is unacceptable. The Book of Ben chapter 3 verse 19 clearly states that "he who lieth with another of the same hair color in the way that a dark-haired man lieth with a light-haired woman has sinned, and must be stoned to death." Now modern-day fobby scripture has revealed to us that the Book of Ben chapters 1 through 10 are no longer the Word of Ben, which is why we no longer stone sinners to death (well, mostly just because it's illegal, but we're working on that; see next week's official letter to be read in Fob congregations), but we know that the first part of that verse is still true. We know this because we have an icky feeling inside whenever we see dark-haired people kissing other dark-haired people. (Light-haired people kissing light-haired people, on the other hand, kind of turns us on--being dark-haired people ourselves, and thus righteously attracted to light-haired people--but we know this is very very very wicked and must be condemned publicly.)

Furthermore, we know that children deserve to be raised by one dark-haired parent and one light-haired parent. This is the way Ben intended it to be, and we know that because that's how it was on Leave it to Beaver. Children raised by two dark-haired parents or two light-haired parents will grow up to be either serial killers or cross-dressers, and really is there much difference between the two? Yes, we know that scientific research does not support this theory, but that's just because all scientists are pro-same-haircolor activists. Whatever you do, don't listen to them.

Now, some people have a problem with constitutional amendments that define marriage as between a dark-haired person and a light-haired person because these amendments are based on doctrines of the Fob religion, which apparently not every person in America believes in (yet). To these people we say Poo on you. Nah nah nah nah nah nah, we're not listening. Perhaps the founding fathers of our great nation (and the founding fathers of each state thereof) neglected to mention in their constitution(s) that marriage should only be between a dark-haired person and a light-haired person, but this was clearly an oversight. They didn't mention it not because they didn't intend it, but because they forgot to. We know this because we've rewritten history so that all founding fathers were believing Fobs, or would have been if they'd had a chance. We're giving them that chance now, by rewriting our nation's constitutions.

To our friends who have already slipped through the cracks of our country's legal system and have "married" people of the same haircolor and started "families" before we could make such an act unconstitutional, rest assured that this is all for your own good. Your "marriages" aren't real marriages and your "families" aren't real families anyway. If you had legal rights to your children, you would only use them to encourage them to be serial killers or cross-dressers (or both) anyway. You don't really want that, do you? Don't answer that. We don't want to know.

To our fellow Fobs who are same-haircolor-attracted but don't act on it, please know that we love you and think about you a lot--at least every time we have to fight for another constitutional amendment ensuring that you never ever marry each other. We know that you must live lonely lives while in this mortal existence, especially now that we've told you that you should no longer ignore your desires and marry an opposite-haircolored person, lest that marriage fail and you blame us for it (sorry to those of you who got married before we changed our mind on this one). So long as you never ever ever ever so much as think about kissing someone of your same haircolor, let alone "marrying" them, you'll live a tolerable life here, and we're pretty sure you'll be happy after you die. If you fail, you will be miserable for all eternity, but rest assured that Ben loves you anyway.

Signed with love and righteous affection,

Mr. Fob

B-Rock vs. McPain

2008-06-26T15:55:00.000-07:00

Ever wonder what a breakdance showdown with G.W. Bush, John McCain, and Condoleeza Rice versus Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton would look like? Wonder no more.

Horton Heard a Who?

2008-06-23T23:15:00.000-07:00

Tonight we saw Horton Hears a Who, which turned out to be much more entertaining than I anticipated. It's interesting on a philosophical level too, whether you look at it as a fable whose moral is that you should have more faith in science, or as an allegory about humanity's relationship with deity--with the disturbing possibility that the gods may or may not believe in us.

To the 2%

2008-06-23T22:39:00.000-07:00

Tonight FoxyJ sent me the link to this feature on religion in the United States in USA Today. Besides being a fascinating survey of religious beliefs and demography, and on top of that a wicked cool interface, the feature was well-timed for me in that Foxy sent it while I was stewing over this article I read tonight about the LDS Church, once again, telling its members to vote for anti-family legislation disguised in pro-family rhetoric. Seeing via USA Today that Mormons make up only 2% of California's population helped me put things in perspective and calm down a bit. I'm still angry that people feel that denying basic rights to families who don't fit an ideal invented in the 1950s is somehow Christlike or even humane, but at least the impact of this particular instance is limited by demography.

As for the small portion of that 2% of Californians who are Mormon who happen to read my blog, as well as any other Californians who may have a say in the anti-family constitutional amendment that the LDS Church believes so strongly should be passed, even if I believed I had the kind of power to make people do whatever I say, I wouldn't tell you to vote or campaign against this proposed amendment based solely on the fact that I say so. Rather, I ask only that you carefully study the facts before making any decisions, which is exactly what the LDS Church tells its members to do in situations not involving gay people marrying each other.

Gay people will couple up and raise children whether or not they're allowed to legally marry. The only thing denying them marriage rights accomplishes is to severely limit their ability to give their partners and their children the legal protections they deserve. My friend Scot, who is planning on legally marrying his husband of thirteen years (also the father of his two sons) next month, has put together articles on the statistical effects of same-sex unions, arguments for marriage equality, and the "ideal family" argument against same-sex marriage.

It's 2:30 in the afternoon and I'm not dressed yet

2008-06-21T14:26:00.000-07:00

I suppose this would be more meaningful if it were not Saturday, when most people don't get dressed before 2:30 in the afternoon, but rest assured that if I wanted to I could do this any day of the week.

That's all.

Master² Fob

2008-06-14T13:52:00.000-07:00

Last night was the Information School convocation. The university-wide commencement is going on right now, but I decided I didn't need three more hours of sitting in my robes of the unholy priesthood in order to feel graduated. FoxyJ, my mom, my parents-in-law, and my sister-in-law were all at the convocation last night so they can bear witness that I did indeed have my name called, walk across a stage, get hooded, and receive a fake diploma.

I had a strange sense of disconnectedness last night. As opposed to the last two times I graduated from college, this time I didn't quite feel like I belonged there. As I sat there listening to the speeches and watching my fellow graduates walk across the stage, I tried to figure out why I had this strong sense of detachment.

I decided it comes largely from the way I approached this program. Whereas I got my English degrees more than anything because I loved studying literature, I came here with only one goal in mind--to earn the degree I needed to get a better library job. This was never meant to be a wonderful college experience but rather a means to an end, a necessary hoop I had to jump through to move forward in my career. With this in mind, I didn't get very involved in school beyond taking classes.

I did work in the library last year and I'm glad I did because if not I might not have made any friends at all. This past year, though, I quit my reference job to volunteer in cataloging, where I worked with cataloging librarians but very few students, and on top of that I had a fellowship that required me to take Spanish and European studies courses so I was taking only about one class from my program per quarter. This last quarter my one LIS class was an online course (and a bad experience at that), so I had basically no live interaction at all with LIS students.

And then there's the fact that last year my personal life was a complete mess so now there are some less-than-pleasant memories associated with my UW experience, and of course the fact that I'm not jumping right into a library career as I'd planned to, calling into question the point of all this. I remind myself, though, that I did learn some valuable things here and I did have some great experiences, and my degree will be very practical and useful a year or two from now when I'm ready for a full-time job. Apart from the degree, here are some of the happy memories I'm taking with me:

Everything cataloging-related. My cataloging courses were my favorite LIS classes and my volunteer work at the library was a blast.
I also had a great metadata class where I stretched myself to learn completely new and unfamiliar concepts, and even though I'll probably never use these skills I really loved my readers' advisory course with superlibrarian Nancy Pearl.
I taught myself html and css well enough to make this portfolio from scratch (no html editing software, thank you very much). If you're at all familiar with the back-end of library catalogs or can imagine you were, it's pretty damn cool. The iSchool liked it enough to use it as one of the sample portfolios on their website.
I had some great jobs here--in the library, in admissions, even the fancy soap and silverware store that got me through that first quarter.
Speaking of which, I only paid tuition that first quarter and then last summer quarter. All five of my other quarters were paid for either by my admissions job or my FLAS fellowship.
And speaking of my FLAS fellowship, the three Spanish classes I took this year were among my favorite classes ever, particularly my play production course (which reminds me--I finally got the DVD of our plays this week so I'll have to figure out how to YouTube a couple scenes).
Perhaps one of the best experiences here for our family has been not mine but S-Boogie's--she got to be in a wonderful (and free) preschool program and made some great friends there, at church, and in our apartment complex.

So yeah, overall there has been some real good to come out of these past two years. But I'm ready now to move onto the next phase--my stay-at-home dad phase, Foxy's PhD phase, S-Boogie's kindergarten phase, and Little Dude's Terrible Two phase. Okay, maybe that last part not so much. But still.

Finish Line in Sight

2008-06-05T13:46:00.000-07:00

Today I attended my Last Class Forever And Ever Until The End Of Time and then I went to the student union building to pick up my cap and gown--which after next weekend will hang in my closet Forever And Ever Until The End Of Time because they made me buy them instead of renting, as I did the last two times I graduated. In the next day or two I need to finish up one last small assignment, and then next Wednesday I will take a final and be done with school Forever And Ever Until The End Of Time .

P.S. Graduation is next week Friday (school convocation) and Saturday (general procession). I accept gifts in the form of cash, check, money order, or Amazon.com gift certificates. iTunes gift cards are also cool.

A Little Confession

2008-06-01T13:30:00.000-07:00

As much as I love the Foxmobile and know it was the best choice for our family, I still have Prius envy. Every time I see a Prius pass by (every eleventh car in Seattle--I counted), I think of the gas we would save and more importantly, the message we would send if we had our very own Prius: that we are tree-hugging, war-hating*, trash-recycling liberals and proud of it. But alas, even a five-year-old Prius would have cost more than our brand new Rondo, and without the sixth and seventh seats in back. I suppose I'll just have to start a blog in order to broadcast my liberal haughtiness.

*I'm not sure, but I think all Priuses come equipped with anti-war and/or anti-Bush bumper stickers.

Out with the Old, In with the New

2008-05-31T20:32:00.001-07:00

Today, seven years to the day (if I recall correctly) since I drove it off the Chevrolet lot in Provo, the Fobmobile left our family to go to the big used car lot in the sky. Either that or the big used car lot in Kirkland--I'm not too sure where exactly the Kia dealer will be taking it.

Although the new car is more literally a Fobmobile than the last one, having come Fresh Off the Boat from Korea and then into our hands after a week of being stuck in the port of Tacoma (had to get its immigration papers in order), I think this new car will be called the Foxmobile. Foxy's name is first on the loan paperwork because she has slightly better credit than I do (though the dealer assured us that we both have impeccable credit, thank you very much), and at any rate after seven years of driving a car named after me it's time she had her turn.

The Foxmobile is a 2008 Kia Rondo. We decided on the Rondo because it seats up to seven people but is one of the most fuel efficient vehicles of its size. It's sort of a cross between a large station wagon and a small van, with just a touch of SUV thrown in. It's really not very large on the outside, but has that extra room on the inside for cargo on road trips or for giving people a ride without making them feel like the children's car seats are on the verge of shoving them out the window. We were close to getting a Mazda 5 instead, but we liked the fact that the Rondo is less minivanny and, with rebates, a couple thousand dollars cheaper. We'd been planning on buying a one- or two-year-old used vehicle, but the Rondo has only been around for a year and we couldn't find any used '07s that were more than a couple hundred dollars cheaper than we could get a brand new one.

As you can probably see, you wouldn't want to drive around with six full-grown passengers on a daily basis nor would it be possible to do so and also have anything more than a little duffel bag in back, but we can certainly fit a fifth person in comfortably (like when we're staying with my mom this summer and don't want to leave her stranded at home while we go gallivanting about Utah), and it's nice to have the seven-person capacity as an option.

But the absolute best feature of all, that which we've lusted after for seven years now (and honestly, all my life)?

Power locks and power windows (with remote entry, to boot). Welcome to the twenty-first century, J-Fob family. Or at least the last decade of the twentieth.

Birthday Reflections and Self-Evident Truths

2008-05-28T23:33:00.000-07:00

Today was Little Dude's second birthday. We had a nice little family party with balloons, presents, veggie burgers, and a very cool bus-shaped birthday cake that FoxyJ made.

One year ago we celebrated LD's first birthday with yummy food and cupcakes and a few friends. Besides the additional company, the big difference last year was that, even though I helped out with the barbecue, I was technically a guest. Foxy and I had been separated for a couple months at that point, with plans to divorce. For LD's birthday, though, we played the role of happy family, not to fool our friends who were very aware of our current situation, but because the role came rather naturally to us, all things considered.

I have a very distinct memory of sitting on the floor during the party, watching the kids play while Foxy chatted with the adults. I looked around and thought, "This is my home. This is where I'm happy." As far as I can recall, that was the first time since moving out that I really questioned whether being divorced is what I really wanted. I had questioned to the point of obsession whether it was the right decision, but until then I was fairly convinced that it was what I wanted, speaking strictly of selfish motivations.

Wary of making a rash decision I'd regret later, I didn't act right away on that thought. I let it sit for a few weeks and in the meantime paid close attention to how I felt when I was with FoxyJ--we had an arrangement during the separation where we were having family dinners together at least twice a week, and then there were the drop-off and pick-up times on the weekend as well. I was far from miserable in my newfound bachelorhood, enjoying above all the time alone it gave me, but I was surprised to find that I felt even happier when I was with Foxy and the kids. I found that, all questions of morality and religion and responsibility aside, I actually liked the life I'd had and chosen to leave behind.

The next question to answer was whether Foxy was happier with me or without me, and after a bit of trial time she decided she could live without me just fine, but if she had a choice she'd rather not. It's nice when things work out that way.

It's strange now to think about how different things were a year ago. Objectively I recognize that less than a year after reuniting it's premature to make any sweeping conclusions about the longterm success of our marriage, but speaking subjectively and in the moment it's hard to imagine anything other than the us that exists now, to imagine that it was ever in question or that it ever could be. I'm a complete person alone but I'm completer with Foxy and the two of us together with our two children feels to me like a self-evident truth that stands at the center of the universe.

Perhaps this is why I've talked about our marriage here quite a bit less in the last year than I did before that. In the past my talking publicly about our reasons for getting and staying married has led some people to believe that I was opening the topic for public debate. How can I debate truths that are self-evident to me? Thankfully, when it comes to matters that affect only our family, I don't have to. So long as the same truths are self-evident to me and Foxy, we're good.

At any rate, I'm happy to have spent today with my son, my daughter, and with a woman who makes creative cakes, who folds origami boat invitations for our daughter's upcoming going-away party, who writes thoughtful posts on the seemingly miraculous birth of our son and how that fits into a world where similar miracles are denied to others, who answers just about every random trivia question I throw at her (and knows what she's talking about 95% of the time), who gets annoyed with people who ask how I feel about being a "Mr. Mom" but is empathetic enough to understand the cultural norms behind such sexist terminology and judge not the people but the norms, who cooks mostly vegetarian because the meat industry is destroying the environment, who regularly exposes me to cool foreign and classic films that I might never have heard of if not for her, who has now qualified twice to be in Jeopardy!'s contestant pool, and most of all who continues to love me despite my personal shortcomings, my eccentric obsessions and time-consuming hobbies, my inability to express emotions in a healthy way, and my passive-aggressive tendencies. I look forward to celebrating LD's twelfth and eighteenth and forty-ninth birthdays by her side.

Typos (A FobRant)

2008-05-27T11:03:00.001-07:00

Believe me, I understand typos. Even though I obsessively read each blog post two or three times before publishing, I know the occasional typo sneaks through here. There are situations, though, where they should not exist. Among these are professionally published books. Nothing takes me out of fiction more than having to mentally reconstruct what the narrator meant to say, and nothing is more useless than a textbook that obscures the facts it's trying to teach in language that forces the reader to guess.

The situation where typos are unacceptable are in teacher feedback on class assignments. I'm not talking about simple misspellings here, where the student knows exactly what the teacher is saying, but rather the exclusion of key words that completely change the meaning of your intended message, like saying "You have included discussion of the Keller’s ARCS model of teaching model" when you meant to say "You have not included discussion..." (Notice I'm not complaining about the redundant model here.) Besides confusing the student, such thoughtless oversights send a clear message that you are rushing through the grading process and not paying much attention. I understand that it takes a long time to grade--I decided not to be a teacher largely because I got burnt out from grading 80 12-page papers in the course of a week--but that's an inevitable reality of teaching. It sucks, but you're the one who chose the career. If you'd given my paper just a little more attention, you might not only have missed that typo, but you might have noticed that I did in fact discuss Keller's damn ARCS model of teaching model.

Another Interview

2008-05-25T11:29:00.000-07:00

The holiday season killed the momentum on several of the interviews I was doing for my series of straight spouse interviews on Northern Lights, and I haven't managed to get very many of them going again since then--as much due to my own busyness as to theirs. Miki Biddles, though, has been kind enough to keep going steadily through the interview and I've finally managed to put all my questions and her answers together and post them. Enjoy.

Wondering

2008-05-16T22:40:00.000-07:00

A couple weeks ago FoxyJ checked out The Prestige from the library. A very cool movie, but the first thing I thought when I saw the cover was "Hey! It's Batman versus Wolverine! And look, there's Alfred!"

Then shortly after that Ken Jennings posted about "superhero crossover" movies where actors who have starred in superhero movies show up together. Besides The Prestige, Ken alluded to Wonder Boys as the movie that made one of his blog readers proclaim, “Holy smokes, Spidey and Iron Man are doin’ it!” So of course I went right to the library website and put Wonder Boys on hold.

As it turns out, this movie has more than superhero sex that should have made me like it more than I did. Besides having some great performances by Tobey Maguire, Robert Downey Jr., and Katie Holmes (Batman's girlfriend, by the way), this film has the Mr. Fob advantage of being about writers and writing. Once I realized this, I was excited--I'm a writer, so maybe this movie would somehow speak to the depths of my soul and tell me something wonderful and profound about writing. Perhaps it was this high expectation that left me feeling most disappointed in the movie with the aspects that had anything to do with writing. I don't know what it was* specifically, but it felt to me like a movie about actors pretending to be writers, not a movie about writers.

I remember feeling similarly about Finding Forrester, which like this was a great movie but felt somewhat artificial to me as far as representing anything like the world of writers that I know. Is it just that these are particular representations of a larger topic that I have a particular experience with, and because the particulars don't match up it seems fake to me? Or is it that they just don't do a good job of being movies about writers? My friends who (like me) are pretentious enough to call yourselves writers, have you seen movies about writers that rang true to you? Have the rest of you had similar experiences with movies about some other subject in your personal domain?

And is this why I was also disappointed by Unbreakable, which everyone told me I'd love as a comic-book fan, but ultimately felt like the work of an outsider to the genre?**

*After writing this post but before publishing it, I've figured out what I don't like about the portrayal of writing in either of the films mentioned above. In both writing is made out to be this magical process that somehow transcends the experience of mere mortal non-writers, but I don't know any writer for whom this is the case. You come up with an idea, you force it onto paper (or onto the screen), it's crap, and then you work and work until it's less crap than it was at first. There's nothing magical about it.

**Notice how I nicely brought the post back to the theme of superheroes, which is what I'd started with but otherwise had nothing to do with anything? Isn't that wonderfully literary of me?

Common Sense Wins in the California Supreme Court

2008-05-15T10:17:00.000-07:00

(at least for the moment)

This makes me happy to be moving to California. Really, I don't see how anyone could see a same-sex marriage ban as constitutional in any context.

Vote 2008!

2008-05-13T19:37:00.000-07:00

As FoxyJ hinted at recently, we're starting to think about getting a new vehicle. Our Chevy Cavalier has served us well for the past seven years, but we're ready for something newer, bigger, and hopefully more fuel efficient. More specifically, we're looking for a vehicle that (a) has power locks, windows, and remote entry; (b) has more cargo space for road trips, room for two car seats and a third adult passenger for when we give rides, and possibly for two car seats and a booster (this is not an announcement--I'm talking about sometime in the next five years here); and (c) gets more than the average of 23 MPG that our current car gets--not just so we can feel smug about being environmentally friendly, but so we can cut down on gas costs and most importantly contribute less to global warming. The problem is that (b) and (c) conflict. As of yet they don't make hybrid vans, so our options are a bigger sedan that gets better mileage or an efficient minivan that gets about the same mileage as what we currently get. It's a tough call because we don't technically need a van, but it sure would be nice to have that extra space.

What do you think? Should we be more Earth-friendly and get one of these hybrids:

Toyota Prius

Toyota Camry Hybrid

Honda Accord Hybrid

or should we be slightly less Earth-friendly and get one of these vans:

Kia Rondo

Mazda5

?

Foxy points out that we don't drive much and will probably drive even less in Davis, so it's not like we'd be guzzling all that much gas in either case. But I really like the idea of a car that gets 45 MPG. Any thoughts?

For The Record

2008-05-11T11:10:00.000-07:00

A conversation at the grocery store this morning at 6:30:

CLERK: Okay, here's a trivia question.
MR. FOB: Um. Okay.
CLERK: What's the name of Donald Duck's fiancée?
MR. FOB: Daisy?
CLERK: (Overjoyed) No! Daisy is his cousin. His fiancée is Daffy!

I didn't argue because it was 6:30 and because I don't argue with people I don't know, at least not in person. But let it be known publicly in my passive-aggressive way that he was wrong and I was right. Daisy is Donald's girlfriend; Daffy is a male duck, which in theory would allow him to be Donald's fiancé (I didn't hear whether the clerk was pronouncing one or two e's), except that Daffy is owned by Warner Brothers and Donald by Disney. Not even Romeo and Juliet were that star-crossed.

Wisdom from Mr. Fob

2008-05-04T20:06:00.001-07:00

Whenever you have to choose between doing it now and doing it later, just let someone else do it.

For My Birthday Girl

2008-05-02T16:23:00.000-07:00

(As a sidenote unrelated to FoxyJ's birthday, this song featuring FOB singer Patrick Stump was supposed to be on the Roots' latest album but when it leaked a couple months ago longtime Roots fans cried "Sell out!" and the band pulled it off the album, except for the iTunes version where it appears as a bonus track. I bought the iTunes version just so I could get the song. Sell out or no, it's a cool song.)

Spoiler Warning

2008-04-30T09:08:00.000-07:00

Today is Wednesday. For those of you who aren't comic book geeks (which may be everyone who reads this blog), Wednesday is new comics day, the day a new shipment arrives at comic book shops everywhere. Today a comic is coming out that is supposed to be relatively important as far as stories in a shared fictional universe go. I'll be heading to Comics Dungeon this afternoon to pick it up. This morning I took a look at my preferred comics news site, as I do several times a day, and saw a story referring to an article in today's New York Daily News that apparently gives away the last-page reveal of this important comic that's coming out today. I resisted the urge to click on the link.

This goes against my nature, and it's hurting.

I knew about the twist at the end of The Sixth Sense two years before I saw it. I enjoyed watching the movie knowing what was coming, catching all the little clues that most people probably didn't notice until the second time they watched it.

I knew about the death at the end of Harry Potter Book 6 before I ever picked up Book 1. Again, it was kind of cool to read the story knowing what was coming. But I resisted seeing any major spoilers about Book 7 before reading it, so I was totally shocked when Harry died at the end. (Just kidding, Cricket. That was for you.)

I must admit, it's not uncommon for me to look at my Amazon.com wishlist before my birthday or Christmas to see what people have bought for me. I wouldn't want them to tell me what they got--part of the fun of ruining the surprise is finding out for myself.

My justification is that I don't actually ruin the surprise; I just experience it earlier. I wonder, though, if by removing the surprise experience from the reading experience or viewing experience or gift-opening experience, I'm missing out on something. This is why, if I can, I'm going to avoid reading that New York Daily News article until after I read my new comics this afternoon. I'll report back on whether saving the surprise makes my comics reading that much more transcendental.

Employed!

2008-04-29T15:50:00.000-07:00

After eight months of unemployment, I will have a job again in mid-May. This afternoon I interviewed for and was offered a job with a company evaluating web searches. Not only is this something that fits in with my career interests, but it also pays well, is part-time, and is done entirely from home. This means that I have a well-paying job that will cover the gap this summer between the end of my stipend and the beginning of FoxyJ's in the fall, that I will be able to keep said job over the transition from Seattle to Davis (and over the stay in Utah that will hopefully come in between the two), and that next year while Foxy is in school I will be able to be a stay-at-home dad and still contribute to my family's economic survival. Really, this is about as ideal as it gets. (Well, no, as ideal as it gets is Foxy winning millions on Jeopardy! while I sign a five-book contract with some big publisher.)

There have been several points in my life when I didn't know how I or my family was going to pay the rent or buy food in the not-too-distant future, and I've never worried about it because it always just works out. If there is a theme to my life, it is that things always work out, usually much better than could possibly be expected. It's tempting to attribute this good fortune to an omnipotent being who is watching out for me (and probably a more convincing argument could be made for an omnipotent being watching out for FoxyJ and her husband just happens to be in the blessed safety zone), but that raises the question of why said being doesn't provide other equally or more deserving people with the same good fortune.

At any rate, whether it's God or the Universe or simply the people around me who make good things happen, I do notice and I do appreciate it. I'll return the favor if the opportunity arises.

The Miseducation of Estelle?

2008-04-28T22:29:00.000-07:00

My musical exploration is generally guided by one principle: the quest to find another Lauryn Hill. Except one who still makes music and isn't, you know, crazy. Apparently, I'm not the only one looking for a new Lauryn.

I came across Estelle a few months ago in my Google News update that sends me news articles that include the words lauryn hill. It's not uncommon for female singers or rappers to be compared to Ms. Hill, as the comparison has become just another way of saying "She's good." What caught my attention in this case was that the person making the connection was Ms. Hill's fellow former Fugee, Wyclef Jean. "I have never worked with a young artist that reminded me so much of Lauryn Hill," he said. And there's good reason for the comparison--the relatively new British artist sings and raps over old school hip-hop, jazz, reggae, and r&b beats similar to the ones that made The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill one of the most commercially and critically successful albums ever.

On Estelle's new album, Shine, technically released tomorrow but available as of about 7:30 PDT tonight on iTunes, Wyclef has produced two tracks. On one of them, "So Much Out the Way," the music varies between a doo-wop beat that easily could have been on Miseducation and a riff of a Bob Marley song that Ms. Hill covered on her MTV Unplugged album, while Estelle smoothly transitions between singing, rapping, and chanting reggae-style. Wyclef seems to be beating us over the head with the comparison, as if to say, "Hey! Look! She can do everything Lauryn can do!"

Does it work? I don't know. It's been rumored that Wyclef is trying to put together a new Fugees-like group with Estelle and singer/rapper Akon, and I have to say that if he did, I'd buy the album, and maybe I'd enjoy it as much as I'm enjoying Shine right now. It wouldn't be the Fugees and Estelle is not Lauryn, but I guess there's room in the world for good musicians who aren't.