squidbag

Max at Five

Max is five years old today.  This year for his birthday he wanted a lot more things than he has asked for in previous years, but he wanted a smaller gathering - just a couple of friends at Chuck E. Cheese.  Hopefully, this does not signal a trend in things over people.  I'm not too worried.

Max loves his baby sister, and a few nights ago, went so far as to let her know that he loves her even when she's screaming and crying.  This was actually while she was screaming and crying.  He usually kisses her head before I take him off to "school" in the mornings.

Max's favorite Pensacola restaurant is King Buffet Chinese.  He likes the chicken with red sauce, the fresh fruit and broccoli.  He does not care about fortune cookies, sushi, or shrimp with tails on them.

I like going into Max's room, because you have to kind of reconstruct what he's been up to.  Last night, I walked in to see my stolen Homestar Runner people (in there since The Game) up to their necks (if they had necks) in Silly Putty.  The pirate ship is in a state of disrepair, having put down anchor near Godzilla.  Max's capes and musical instruments are strewn all over the floor, as are his action figures and cars.  His tent has a number of comics and the pillow in the tent has his headprint in it still.  It's starting to look like a boy's room, what with the half-finished things, artwork, socks, toys and various things scattered in what I can only describe as an "active mess" in the same way that the US Constitution is a living document.

Max's favorite game, by far, is "Let's make up ___________."  The blank contains "superheroes,"  "aliens," "good guys & bad guys," "inventions" or "animals."  Max's recent inventions include an "Old Tree Smasher" for taking down rotten timber, a "Flying Saucer for Kids," for getting kids across town without having to ride in the back, a "Sock Collector" for picking up dirty socks, and a "Door Hand" for opening troublesome doors.

On Monday, Max went ecological on me, and related to me, from the forefront of his imagination, the plight of the Rolling M, a creature that occurs in nature, but has been hounded to near-extinction because people make too much noise with their food, cars, guns and smoke.  Most of the Rolling Ms come from Pluto, and they get around on this planet on skateboards, which they hold onto with glue.  We have just about chased all of the Rolling Ms off of Earth, and it won't be long before we're in big trouble with Pluto.

Max sleeps every night in his Spider-Man sleeping bag, zipped up with Kermit the Frog, Elmo the Monster, Stillwater the Panda, and Spongebob Squarepants.  He often tucks whatever book or toy is important right then under his pillow as well.  He is a recent fan of the Captain Underpants books, so those are often the choice.

I read Max comments left for him, so I hope you'll all wish Max a good fifth!

Ow, My Fucking Javelin!

Proof positive that life is unfair.

Nigh on eight or nine years ago now, my buddy Jim Moore brought his javelin back from a weekend trip.  Back into Sarasota, and Jim lived right down Mecca Drive from us.  Trouble was, he didn't really have the backyard for throwing a javelin, so we kept the orange shaft of truth at our apartment.  As I recall, we kept it standing up in a corner (we had vaulted ceilings and were on the second floor) behind a bookcase in the corner.  Dug, Evan, Jim and I used to head out into the backyard of the apartment complex, often drunk, sometimes more, and chuck the javelin for distance.  Jim was the only one with form, having done this in high school, but the rest of us got pretty good for distance.  Truth?  I didn't sleep much, and would often wander outside at three or four o'clock in the morning and hurl the javelin.  One night I remember I threw it sixty times.  I never slept so well.

My point is thus:  Often under the influence of recreational depressants, four amateur javelin throwers (at least two of whom could legitimately be said to be accident prone) threw a sharp bolt of metal around like it was a toy - and no one ever got hurt.  Now this lady, who officiates this stuff, gets stuck like part of a butterfly collection while doing her job.

There's no justice in the world.

T to tha Mothafuckin' V

I used to be one of those annoying people who was proud of not really watching any television.  Back in the day, I used to watch shows, but then in the course of one year, my favorite shows (and cartoons) all got cancelled, and I said, "to hell with this," and didn't watch much of anything for like, five years.  Then, I started watching the Simpsons, and I did that for a while.  Of course, Fox being Fox, I ended up watching some of whatever was around the Simpsons, too.  When we moved to Pensacola, C & I started watching Alias together, and my slippery slide began.  Now, while it is still my belief that I watch a lot less TV than most people I run into, I do watch shows, cartoons, sporting events, and all kinds of things on TV.  I have recently caught myself not muting commercials.  I will recover, but in the meantime, thought I would talk about some of what I have seen on TV lately.

Justice - Yes, initially, I was only watching this because of Victor Garber.  On the first night, though, when I watched it and saw Eamonn Walker and a Warren Zevon theme song, I decided I was really going to like the show.  So far I have, though C and I have begun, after four episodes, to be able to predict what's going to happen.  If 5 surprises us, we'll stick with it.  I like the speed and pace of the show, and the acting is very good for the most part.

NFL on NBC - John Madden and Al Michaels are calling the games, and aside from being on Sundays instead of Mondays, who the fuck cares what network it's on?  I've enjoyed the two partial games I've watched this season, and I'm glad that network TV (as opposed to ESPN or the NFL channel) has gotten some of the good matchups.

Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century - One of Max's and my favorite shows on TV right now, and it tunrns out that it was cancelled in 2001.  The fact that it's running in syndication means you often get two of them back to back, though.  The concept is pretty obvious and the title sucks, but they do Holmes stories that you'll recognize if you've ever read Doyle.  And Watson is a robot, which is cool.

Studio 60 - Warren Ellis put the clip of this on his blog months ago, and I decided to watch it then.  I was not disappointed with the premiere, I thought it was super fast, funny, and fairly intelligent, but what I most liked was all of the inbred pop culture reflexivity being dumped into the content and characters of the show.  When you have the "new" replacing the "old" and you use Perry and Whitford instead of Judd Hirsch and Ed Anser, that's deliberate.  I will be very curious to see if this can sustain not only its own momentum, but my interest.

Talk Show with Spike Feresten - I think this is funny.  I love the concept, the stripped down, red-headed stepchild of late night TV, and it's only on Saturdays, which means the staying power is increased.  Anyway, I prefer this to most of the real sketch comedy shows out there.  This guy used to write for Letterman, the Simpsons, and Seinfeld.

Viva Pinata - The stupidest thing I've ever seen on television, and it turns out it's just Microsoft marketing for some Xbox shit coming out, which explains a lot.  The characters in the cartoon aspire to go to parties, where they will presumably be bashed apart and have their entrails consumed by hyper children.

My Foot Hurts

Yep.  My right foot - my ankle actually - is really bothering me today.  I could try and blame it on walking from the bay into Seville Square today for the Seafood Festival, where we walked around and ate duck empanadas and crab fritters and drank frosted lemonade and bought peach salsa.  I could try and blame it on clothes and birthday shopping, both of which were done this weekend.  My ankle's a little swollen, and it's tender around the scars from the screw holes, but I don't think that any of this is the real reason why.  I think it's because I kicked a total stranger in the balls during an altercation in a public restroom last night.  I'm so proud.

And if I were smart, I wouldn't be writing about it in here, in a semi-public forum, for all of you (?) to read.  Of course, if I were smart, I probably wouldn't have done it in the first place, so here we go:

C works on Saturday nights, and so last night I took the kids and went to a mall, hoping to get some pet stuff, Max stuff and cigars.  We had four hours to kill.  At about hour three, we went into the public men's restroom at the mall, and Max took a pee.  Max is nearly five, and frequently drops his pants to his ankles to pee, especially in urinals.  This exposes his whole bottom.  Typically, and always if I think anyone else is around, I "block" for him, standing behind him until he's buttoned up again.  While he was taking his leak, I turned to check on Abby, basically just making a funny face and replacing the pacifier.  She was in her stroller and mostly okay.  When I turned back, there was a man standing in the stall next to the urinal Max was using.  He had to have been there the whole time, I guess.  The door was mostly open, and the man was groping at his crotch.  I seem to remember lip licking, but that could be inaccurate.  That could just be the poisons in my brain left over from last night.

I handled this in my usual way.  You know me, you read this blog.  Max didn't see anything, so focused on his song and peeing was he.  I contained the asshole in the stall, and he was bleeding and passed out when I left - we're talking about a matter of seconds.  I just came out of a stall I had suddenly gone into, wrapped Max up, skipped hand washing (fucking sue me) and left.  We strolled our stroller, with Max's hand tight in mine, toward the nearest exit, and we did pass a security guard, to whom I advised, "You got a pervert in that men's room, there," without even slowing down.  I think she went to check.  I hope she goddamn checked.

We went to a toy store after, and got Icees.  I pretended everything was okay.  As usual, my instincts are spot-on, it's my actual actions that need work.  It's since been pointed out to me that a citizen's arrest or bringing the security people to him might have been more effective, and that's probably true.  I like to think that waking up damaged and sitting in toilet water might work, too.

Blog as confessional.  The digital age helps an atheist.  I could have been watching football when I wrote this.

Metablogging

I haven't posted anything new lately, because I've been directing all of the energies I would normally put into blogging into sorting my blog into tags.  Since the stuff in my blog goes back to its resurrection in August of 2004, this took me quite a bit longer than I thought.  (We've also closed on a re-finance, planned Max's birthday, had Mitch & Becky in town - hi, guys - and taken over aspects of Jones' life, namely his truck, gun & dog in the past couple of weeks, so there's been non-blog activity as well, you see.)  The Squidbag is now possessed of increased organization, as you will see from the categories below.  The way I see it is:  If you like this blog but my views on religion bother you, then you can avoid those by switching to some other tag.  But probably not.  Moving on...

Books, Film, Television, Sports, Current Affairs, Science, Music:  All pretty obvious, one would hope.  If you cannot divine what's in these, you're retarded, and you should go home and sleep it off.

My Kids: My kids rock, and you have the right to know all about it.

Comics Literature:  Because it is.

God and His Minions: I write about them a pretty fair bit, you may have noticed, and I thought I would lump them all into one category, otherwise known as a bitchfest.  For those of you who've complained about this one over time; if they'd stop doing stuff, I'd quit writing about them.

Trashing the Government:  I do this.  It's one of my duties as a citizen.  I've put stuff about electoral politics and the military in there, and I know some people will disagree with that, and I would too, if I did, but I don't.

Whining about Pensacola: Self-explanatory.  I will say that I briefly contemplated a host of these tags, including Kvetching about Pensacola, Bitching about Pensacola, Pissing about Pensacola, Moaning about Pensacola, and Carping about Pensacola.

Esoterica & Other Shit: These are very nearly - but not exactly - the same thing.  Esoterica will, for the most part, contain entries which didn't fit into one of the other sections, but contain useful information anyone can use, IMHO.  Other Shit contains entries that didn't fit anywhere else as well, but are so personal or specific as to be useless to anyone but me.  If you find an entry about yourself in Other Shit, don't be offended, and if you are, swallow your rage, push into a sack made from your soul, and use your anger to fight vampires.

(my cat cant come in) - Max really wanted to write something in here while I was writing - that's what he chose to put in.  Has a very Ralph Wiggum feel to it, but I think he chose to write it because he knows how to spell all those words.

Morning Mammoth Chat

MAX:  ...we could all be aliens, and since we would be huge aliens, and some of us would be bigger than houses, we wouldn't be able to go on bridges.

ME:  Why not?

MAX: Huge aliens could get on bridges and block them or slime them up, and then the cars would get knocked off, and the bridges might fall down, and there'd be fire trucks in the water, and a big disaster.  So these aliens would have to be big enough just to walk or jump from land to land.

ME: Makes sense.  We could have a boat.

MAX: It would have to be a huge boat.  Huger even than all four aliens.  Really huge.  Really, really huge.

ME:  Massive.

MAX: What does "massive" mean?

ME:  "Massive" means really, really huge.  Or, you know, like mammoths, the big furry elephant-like things from prehistory?  That you really like?

MAX:  Yeah...

ME:  Well, mammoths were so big that people use the word "mammoth" to describe something that's really big.  So, like, if you saw a really big building, you could say, "That building is mammoth."

MAX:  (begins to giggle)

ME: ...you're picturing a huge tall building covered in brown fur, aren't you?

MAX: (laughing now)  Yeah.

The Boy's Wish List

Knowing that his birthday (and based upon the sheer volume of this list, Christmas) was pending, I, last weekend, took Max to Toys R' Us, armed him with a scanner gun and turned him loose upon the store.  These are some of the things he scanned in (I have spared you the fire engine bed, among other things) and some of the things we have spoken about since.  For those of you interested, this should make a nice, comprehensive guide.

Animals of the World (book) - Max's fascination with all things animal continues undimmed.

Human Body game with Stethoscope - What's the scope for, when you can remove skin?  Still, a cool toy.

Thing mask & chestplate - he has the hands and feet already...

Mace Windu's Lightsaber - and only Mace Windu.  No one else's is acceptable.

Pop Up Pirate game - this looks like less fun than he thinks it is...

Egyptian Tomb playset/game, which I thought was a fantastic choice.

Ben 10 Action Figures  - Max likes FourArms, Grey Matter, GhostFreak, HeatBlast and Diamondhead.

Pirates of the Caribbean book & spyglass  Capt. Jack Sparrow is cool, and Max was drawn (I think) to the things that go in the spyglass.

Biggest Book Ever of Questions & Answers - very cool book.

fast talkin' Lightning McQueen, pretty much since the movie came out.

Fisher-Price: Tremor the Mammoth, Wings the Pteranodon, Razor the T-Rex, Shreds the Raptor, and Spike the Stegosaurus.

Doodle Monster ???

Superman blanket  Sort of an odd request, but okay.

"Cars" for the Leapster

Spider-Man game for the Leapster

"Incredibles" game for the Leapster

"Madagascar" for the LeapPad

Avengers ("Marvel Adv" = all ages) comic book subscription - I already get him Spider-Man, FF, JLA and Teen Titans, and he doesn't want to give up any of those.  If so inclined, he also does not currently get The Batman Strikes!

Zathura the board game, which is beyond his level, maybe, but again - since the movie...

Avatar: the series Vol 1 (dvd) - Kat talked this up, and he saw a commercial for it, and thinks it looks cool.

Howl's Moving Castle (dvd) - Uncle Jon rented this for him, and he's talked about it since then.

Spongebob Squarepants Lost in Time (dvd)...

Kid K'Nex Bucket of Buddies - he needs expansion on the K'Nex.

Rock'em Sock'em Robots - out of the old school!

There was also a whole raft of GameCube games I let him scan, basically everything Pixar, Jimmy Neutron, SpongeBob, and comic book person he saw, but those fuckers are expensive, so I'll spare you those, too.  Take this list or leave it - Max likes surprises, too - I wouldn't even have posted this except that more than one person had asked for it.

All But 9

create your own visited states map or check out these Google Hacks.

Alaska and the upper Northwest you can kind of understand, but how have I missed Virginia all these years?  Utah's kind of on purpose, and Vermont is for lovers - but not for me, apparently.  I should probably, at some point, turn this into a vacation or two: "Finishing out the Map," A journey by the Squidbag.  I could take up my knapsack and wander, like the end of every episode of the Incredible Hulk TV show.

You Have Some Nerve

Moslems all over the planet are upset with the Pope, partially because he quoted from a 14th century Byzantine text as part of a recent speech (the text trashes Islam a little), but mostly because he's Catholic, and not Muslim, and thus, wrong.  The Vatican is jumping backwards like a frightened chicken on this issue, trying desperately to calm down the global Muslim community, because as everyone knows, you stir up the peaceful, God-adoring Muslims, and shit tends to blow up, fall down, and catch fire.  How concerned are they?  Well, they've already apologized.  It took them nearly four hundred years to apologize for Galileo.

Attempting to make a point about the incompatibilty of faith and war, Pope Benny quoted the following, "Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." A stupid thing to say in the current global climate (not to mention during the week of September 11th), but it does contain a nugget of the truth.  There is an inherent violence in any form of monotheism - a fact of which the Catholic Church should be well aware, what with their history of Crusading Death.

Moderate, or reform or whatever, Moslems want us to ignore their zealous brothers who explode things, because they are "not representative."  I believe them when they say this, but the request is impossible.  Unfortunately, groups are often judged by their extremist members, who are the most visible.  Additionally, Islam does include things like the concept of Jihad and the idea that if you "beat a woman lightly" that this is somehow okay.  After the Super Bowl or not, they don't distinguish.  The continued assertion by both parties - the capital "C" Church and the loose global Jihad -  that their faiths are best represented by the quiet, peaceful rank-and-file simply does not hang together.  You ARE groups with extreme ideas, and you ARE trying to push your ideas on others.  You wish the world was more Catholic, or more Muslim.

Finally, I once again stumble on the idea that one group of believers would care what another group of oppositional believers thinks about them.  It would be ridiculous if an Evangelical Christian gave two-fifths of shit what my opinions were on God, faith, and the scripture.  And yet...

Bonding Moment

Since Abby got here, she's sort of preferred her mom to me.  You would, too.  (You may already.)  Let me give you a choice: Say you can go to a warm and comfortable buffet in your pajamas that produces the most food when you're the hungriest, and then lets you fall asleep on it when you're finished eating.  Say the alternative is rubbing your face against sandpaper and eating fake food that always gives you gas.  What would you pick?  There's also been the additional impediment of C spending 10 or more hours a day with her than I do.  Lately, this has begun to change a little.  Abby's warming up to me, and Sunday night we had a lovely time together.  She sat with me for the entire second half of the Colts/Giants matchup, and we quietly (for the most part) watched a football game together.

(insert clever comparison to Homer & Lisa in this space)

We had one small incident, when I shouted out "Interception!" and scared the hell out of her, but once we got that under control, we sat together on the floor on some pillows and watched the first NFL contest of the Manning brothers.  I decided to talk to her as if two things were true: 1) she could understand every word I said, and 2) she was really interested in not only the action of the game, but the baseline rules of pro football (including that "subtracting ten seconds off the clock" thing which kind of bit me in the ass - I don't remember that).  I explained about the greatness of Tiki Barber, the occasional incomprehensibility of John Madden, and the fact that Adam Vinatieri never misses.  At the end of what turned out to be a great game (with some bad officiating), she was covered in drool, my leg was asleep, and I felt briefly a whole lot better about the universe.