squidbag

I Remember A Time...

Through the gossamer haze of time, I can cast back my mind on an invisible but tenacious thread of recollection and remember a time when high and mighty righteous Republicans lined up lockstep to impeach President Bill Clinton for lying under oath.  And make no mistake - no matter what the fuck your definition of "is" is, that philandering louse lied.  Much bally was hooed about Clinton's fibbing and fucking around, and Kenneth Starr spent a serious chunk of time and money to launch a failed impeachment.  Now, as I reel in my mind from the timestream, I am confronted by the current behavior of the GOP - the party of conservative "family values", of truth and honor and God-fearing supposed virtue - and I shake my shaggy head slowly with a knowing smile on my lips as I observe the hypocrisy which chips away at what was once a strong majority with an iron grip on power.

It begins, of course, in the wake of 9-11, when our erstwhile President squanders the goodwill of the rest of the planet in an effort to demonize appropriate parties and facilitate a plan-free two-front Holy War, polarizing everything into two categories: Himself plus his allies on the one side - the "Right" side, and on the other side - evil.  With it's own Axis.  Axis & Allies.  Like a peek into the President's game cabinet.  "If you're not with us, you're against us," is something he said, and he also said, "Bring it on," which is great if you're a vigilante cowboy with a hard gaze and a harder life in a dusty street with a sixgun shootin' iron name of Sue Ellen on your hip and the sun at your back, but not so terribly moral if you're fighting a war against an abstract noun by dumping other people's children into a damned meatgrinder.  Somewhere in here, the Monkeyface Administration, led by Hell's Prince of Secrets, Dick Cheney, decided to stop telling anyone anything ever, whether it was to do with arrests, activities, movements, or just shit they didn't feel like talking about.  They started lying.  A lot.  Making an end-run around the truth to maintain operational security is one thing, but lying straight out to the American people and waving the feces-stained flag of "executive privilege" in front of things that have nothing to do with anyone's life except yours is a horse dropping of a different color.  I was shocked that Evangelical Christians of the sort that currently populate the White House would lie like this, until I went over the 10 Commandments and realized that a prohibition against lying really isn't in there.  So that's probably okay, then.

As the slide into complex immorality slowly got slicker and steeper, Dick shot his hunting buddy in the face, which is not ethical or moral behavior.  Neither is sitting on the news for a weekend before deciding that people need to know.  That you shot your buddy in the face.  Just can't say it enough times.  Once you get elected to the highest offices in the land, you are no longer your own man.  Your ass doesn't even belong to you anymore.  We hear when you get a colonoscopy, so probably a near-manslaughter rates a mention.  A prompt mention.

As people have bailed on (and been bailed from) the White House - Rumsfeld, Rove, Gonzales, and now Snow (though I think I'm forgetting somebody) we are often point blank lied to about when they might be leaving, because the President doesn't want to "affect other events."  With the truth?  That would be truly novel for this administration - allowing the facts to affect the events or decisions that happen.  Imagine, if some facts had been injected into the Iraq War run-up.  Wonder of wonders.

Then it was Cheney Aide Scooter Libby's sex stories, with bears raping women instead of answering questions and riding on bicycles.  And Congressman Mark Foley harassing underage male pages with gross massage emails, during his time off from chairing the Exploited Children's Caucus.  Republican Presidential hopeful Fred "The Russians Don't Take a Dump Without a Plan" Thompson is basically responsible for the 18 1/2 minute gap, and lobbies for pro-choice groups, which seems a hypocrisy at bare minimum.  And now there's Senator Craig from Idaho, who's definitely not gay, despite asking an undercover officer for sex in a men's room.  He's also not a liar, even though he seems to have lied about it and tried to make it go away.

It seems as though God's party just isn't the moral bastion we were led to believe it was.  Why can't we have good staunch moral people in the GOP anymore?  Men like Richard Nixon, Bill O'Reilly, Clarence Thomas, Trent Lott, Tom DeLay, Herbert Hoover, Rush Limbaugh & William Casey?  Truly, we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again.  For what, I don't know, but we'd find a use.

Out With The Olds?

You know how once or twice a year, your local public radio and TV stations come to you and ask for money to help keep them going?  And you sometimes pony up, either out of guilt or responsibility, and you feel that it cheapens the whole relationship, but you eventually get over it, because you value what they do and the respect that they discarded in favor of the almighty dollar, hydra-like, eventually grows back to lure you in once again?

Heh.

I need a new car, folks.  The venerable gun-metal grey 1989 Oldsmobile Regency 98 is breathing its last.  It has developed a new engine noise that sounds to me like a death rattle, and this is on top of it's raft of other problems: wreck damage from the Memorial Day altercation, one working headlight (and it point up), no A/C (for years), no gas gauges, no heat, a fried electrical system, busted wing mirror, questionable taillights, a brake line leak, leaky moonroof (like buckets on my fuckin' head), headliner falling in, flood damage, three operational windows, two broken locks, bad shocks, rust and corrosion from years in Wisconsin, paint scrapes from a Florida hurricane.

Don't get me wrong - I love this car.  This is the car I bought for 2K from my Madison, WI mechanic after she maintained it for years.  I'm only the 4th owner, and I've had it since early 2002.  It's got only a little over 170 thousand miles on it.  I have enjoyed this car more than any since my first car, the 1985 Pontiac 6000, Dentladenworthy.  This is the car that tried to kill me in the driveway in Pensacola.  This car used to take Kate to work in the mornings.  This car missed two buses by inches rushing Jesse to the hospital in the snow.  This car moved the contents out of the Pinnacle building, and moved a bunch of our stuff here to Nashville.  It's the last car my cat rode in, and the only car of mine my son has ever known.  This car was struck by lightning.  And of course, there's this.  We have history.  But the time is coming.

Unfortunately, this is ill-timed.  With C starting her new job right now, and Abby in day care, funds are a little tight, and two cars are needed.  So, as much as I hate asking for your help, I'd hate not having a car more.  I have set up a ChipIn widget over to the side there, just above my Flickr thing, and your contributions to the Squidbag's New Olds ('cause I'd buy the same car again if I could find it) fund will go straight into my PayPal.  If I can raise 2 grand (my upper limit for what I will pay for a new vehicle), I will sell the 98 for whatever I can get for it, and I'd be open to suggestions for what to do with that money.

So - my digital hat is in my hand, or digital tentacle as it were.

Gonzales Apology

Appearing today in a 10:30am press conference, clad only in a tear-and-pasta-sauce-stained T-shirt and wrinkled chinos, reeking of cheap whisky & desperation and carrying a gun, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales (shown here jerking off America) read from his resignation letter:

"For most of my life, I've been an attorney, not a real person, so, you know, I really don't know, you know, how to say what I really want to say.  You know, I understand it's — it's important or not important, you know, as far as what you say but how you say things. So, you know, I take this opportunity just to speak from the heart.  If I had a heart, but I don't.  So I'll speak from the roughly approximate mostly central organ of what passes for my body.

First, I want to apologize, you know, for all the things that — that I've done and that I have allowed to happen. I want to personally apologize to others in the office of the Attorney General, the Department of Justice, the Catholic Church, all Hispanics, everywhere, and especially the United States Senate, you know, for our — for our previous discussions that we had. And I was not honest and forthright in our discussions, and, you know, I was ashamed and totally disappointed in myself to say the least.

I want to apologize to all the young kids out there for my immature acts and, you know, what I did was, what I did was very immature so that means I need to grow up.

I totally ask for forgiveness and understanding as I move forward to bettering Al Gonzales the person, and not Al Gonzales the part-time public citizen moving rapidly toward money-grubbing fuckstain.

I take full responsibility for my actions. For one second will I sit right here — not for one second will I sit right here and point the finger and try to blame anybody else for my actions or what I've done.  Unless it's Bush, who ass-raped the authority right out of the DOJ at the earliest opportunity.  Or Cheney, who requires blood token just to work for this administration.  But for having the capacity to lie right in the face of this country's lawmakers, and for the deliberate goldfish-like recall of what some people like to think of as facts?  I will blame no one, no one but myself, until my autobiography comes out.

I'm totally responsible, and those things just didn't have to happen. I feel like we all make mistakes. It's just I made a mistake in using bad judgment and making bad decisions. And you know, those things, you know, just can't happen.

Fucking with people's civil rights as provided for in the Constitution is a terrible thing, and I did reject it.  I mean, eventually.  You know, when I was done and it became clear that these fuckers were hanging me out to dry.  When I squeezed every last drop of blood from Justice, and corrupted the system entirely, I stepped away.  Sometimes, you have to just say, "Enough.  No Mas."

I'm upset with myself, and, you know, through this situation I found Jesus and had Him tortured in a nameless, desolate prison cell in the middle of backwater nowhere until He gave me forgiveness and then I turned my life over to God. He gave it back.  And I think that's where we are as of right now.

Like I said, for this — for this entire situation I never pointed the finger at anybody else, I accepted responsibility for my actions of what I did and now I have to pay the consequences for it. But in a sense, I think it will help, you know, me as a person. I got a lot to think, deny, forget, and lie about in the next year or so.

I offer my deepest apologies to everybody out in there in the world who was affected by this whole situation. And if I'm more disappointed with myself than anything it's because of all the young people, young kids that I've let down, who look at Al Gonzales as a role model. And to have to go through this and put myself in this situation, you know, I hope that every young kid out there in the world watching this interview right now who's been following the case will use me as an example to using better judgment and making better decisions.  Don't screw with a living document and balanced systems because of partisanship, kids.

Once again, I offer my deepest apologies to everyone. And I will redeem myself. I have to.  'Cause boy, do I suck.

So I got a lot of down time, a lot of time to think about my actions and what I've done and how to make Al Gonzales a better person.

Thank you."

From here, Alberto offered freshly baked apology cookies to everyone in the room, and announced that he would be pitfighting Michael Vick for money and for something to put in Chapter 26 of his autobiography sometime between now and December 12th.  Tickets available through TicketBastard.  T-shirts and shot glasses will be sold.

Yeah, I Meme Now

1. Have you had your tonsils out yet? No, and you'll have to pry them from my cold, dead throat at this point.  I use them for yodeling, like most people do.  And Tarzan yells.  Story my mom tells is: It's First Grade, and I've had numerous legit tonsil infections.  Doctor tells my mom, "next one of these, and we should just take them out."  Last one I ever had.  Like the tonsils knew.

2. Is there anyone you used to be friends with and you are no longer on speaking terms? Fuck, yeah.  I've been cultivating enemies since before Al Gore invented Internet memes while driving down the InfoSuperHighway in his Prius.  What else ya got?

3. Are all of your grandparents still alive?  No.

4. Do you tend to be afraid of confrontation?  No.  I find it cathartic, cleansing.  Nice.  Ahem.

5. Would you consider yourself an expert at anything?  Are you an expert at stupid questions?  Is the Pope an expert at Catholicism?  Yes, yes I would - but every time I think I'm an expert at something I remind myself that there is always...another.  Being an expert is not being a Highlander.  An Highlander?  I don't know, I'm not an expert in that arena.

6. Do you collect anything? Comic books.  Good stories.

7. Do you answer calls from bill collectors? Only when they're looking for other people, like Steven Wright, or maybe a former roomie.

8. How many boyfriends / girlfriends have you had that you can count over your life?  I choose not to count them, because that trivializes them and objectifies my behavior in a way that makes me stabby.  Besides, a stolen kiss on a hotel room floor from a girl you never dated can be just as big as a whole relationship with a different someone.  It's all in the past, anyway.  I've said too much again, haven't I?

9. Have you ever known anyone that was kidnapped?  For real, or like, for a birthday surprise?

10. What is the biggest material gift anyone has ever given you? Comics...tickets to stuff.  Booze.   A wedding ring.  A watch.  Some other jewelry items.  Things that I tend to hold onto because dead people used to own them.

11. Do you like horror movies?  Yeah, as long as they're scary to a purpose.  I do not watch murder porn - movies where you just count the dead and see how people's fingers come off.

12. What is an embarrassing situation you were once in? Backhanding a drunken asshole in front of a bunch of crunchy hippie pacifists, then having to discuss it for weeks.  "The slap heard round the world."  Pretty embarrassing.  Explaining the rationale behind losing your temper sucks.

13. What is a nickname that you hate to be called?  Why in fuck would I put that here?

14. Is there anyone that you hate to love?  G. Gordon Liddy.  Hillary Duff.  We are not discussing this.

15. Is there anyone that you love to hate (or strongly dislike)?  Authority.

16. Do you get along with your in-laws?  Better now than in the recent past.

17. Are you comfortable talking to people you don't know?  I have forgotten how to mingle.  I had to "network" so much from 2003 to 2005 that it killed my old banter.  I now people-watch, read the signs, and wait for people to saunter over.

18. Have you ever seen something of an "other-worldly" nature?  Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Halley's Comet, billions and billions of stars.  I once stared into the movie "Pi" for two hours, but that nearly blinded me, so I don't watch anything by Aronofsky anymore.

19. How many first cousins do you have?  Two?

20. How much did you weigh when you were born?  9 lbs., 6 oz.

21. Who taught you to ride a bike? ...couldn't tell ya.

22. What family member, besides your parents and siblings, are you closest to?  My maternal grandmother, I guess.  Unless my brother- & sister-in-law count.

23. Do you still keep in contact with anyone from your kindergarten class? No.

24. How old were you when you had your first kiss?  Fourteen.

25. Who was the first person to break your heart?  My parents.

26. Do you have a healthy body image? I don't read those kinds of magazines.

27. How old are you in your earliest memory? 18 months.  I am falling in sock feet on a kitchen floor and splitting my lip, being rushed to the ER for stitches.

28. Have you ever had a "lucid" dream; a dream in which you realized you were dreaming and made decisions to control and change the dream?  Yeah, but I had to read about it and teach myself how to do it, and it's still not a 100% thing.

29. Cats or Dogs?  Both are delicious.  Both, seriously.  Cats because their personality is more like mine, and dogs because they're not like me at all.

30. Do you have a mentor?  A couple.  Pak, my old sensei, my great Uncle Hugo.  Hugo, to me at sixteen: "You have to stop and realize occasionally that you don't know every fucking thing."

31. What causes you the most stress? Cash screws everything around me.

32. Have you ever written a web survey? Nope.

33. Would your life make a good movie? Edited properly, sure.

34. Would your life make a good sitcom?  Again, same caveat.

35. What would the name of your life's movie be?  Here, I am open to suggestions.  What you guys say is always funnier, anyway.

36. What would the name of your life's sitcom be? "Change the Channel"

I tag you all.

"Fuck You, Michael Vick."

...

Not a good Summer to be a sports fan.  Gambling roundball ref, Pac-Man fucking Jones, Barry Bonds empty "accomplishment," wrestler kills his whole family.  If you're the sort of person who uses sports spectatorship as an escape from the daily cacophony - good luck with that.  Now, finally, topping out the Summer of sports mayhem and bullshit, we have Atlanta Falcons quarterback Mike Vick, being taken down for fighting dogs, killing dogs, and various other conspiracy/gambling nastiness affiliated with such activities.  I hate this.  I hate this because Vick was going to be a fun player to watch.  I hate this because it fuels the racist "ghetto player" argument.  Mostly, I just hate this.  And Vick.  And since I didn't have anything more intelligent than that to say on the subject, I invited people here who would.  Here are Cayce and Matt from Atlanta on Michael Vick:

Cayce:  "I will give my own personal view of the Vick debacle.

I'm not a big football fan, but I've been around the sport my entire life and don't have an anti-football agenda.  I'm perfectly happy for my husband (as I was with my family) to sit around on a Sunday afternoon or a Monday night and soak up the game.

That said, I look at the Vick thing on a micro-local level.  Our neighbors are raising their three grandchildren.  We like the kids a lot and have spent a good bit of time with them.  The youngest, Jeremiah, is the troubled one.  At 9, he's an emotional maelstrom; a kid who can change the mood of a feel good day without warning, in a moment.  All the other kids (there are two boys on the other side of us), walk on eggshells around him.  But even with that, it's not at all uncommon to hear a day of playing on the trampoline in one neighbor's yard end with Jeremiah making a big stink and stomping off.  He's a tiny little guy, but can fill our collective back yards with his ranting.

When we first moved in, Jeremiah spent many of his days wearing a Michael Vick jersey and throwing the football with Colin, his cousin.  He talked about his future as a quarterback for the Falcons.  Everyone reminded him that if he didn't start eating sometime soon, there would be no sports in his future, unless of course he wanted to be a jockey.  Michael Vick was his idol.  I should point out that Jeremiah is black and his attachment to Vick as a role model was very strong.

Last week, when I was out of town, Matt was in the backyard with the kids, swimming.  They all come over every Monday night, while it's warm, to swim.  The kids on the other side have a black lab puppy, Guinness, who comes with them to play with our dog Puck.  Guinness is a much bigger dog than Puck and Puck sometimes tires of him.  When this happens, he will growl at Guinness to back off.  Last week, when Puck growled at Guinness, Jeremiah jumped out of the pool excitedly and yelled, "Dog Fight!"

Matt explained to Jeremiah why dog fights weren't cool, but I'm guessing it didn't sink in.  If Michael Vick did it, it must be okay."

and Matt:

Fucking Michael Vick…

If you grew up in Atlanta, watching Steve Bartkowski and an unfortunate procession of quarterbacks named Chris lead the dirty-birds to a series of sub-.500 seasons, it was hard not to get a little giddy when the Falcons drafted Michael Vick. Finally, we didn’t waste a number one draft pick. Finally, a quarterback to replace Brett Favre (who was traded away by the inestimable coach Jerry Glanville with the prophetic words that Favre would “never play a down in the NFL.”) Our time in the wilderness was over. Anyone who watched the previous year’s NCAA championship football championship just knew that Vick could be football’s Michael Jordan. So what if he didn’t actually win that game against Miami...

Things looked promising enough. He beat Favre at Lambeau in December. At Lambeau! No one had ever done that before. He came within inches of a Super Bowl in his first full year as a starter, close enough to taste next season. I actually watched the preseason games the next year. I remember the familiar sinking sensation when Ray Lewis broke Vick’s leg and the familiar thought: next year. The following year, next year. The year after that, next year.

The whispers that had followed Vick his whole career grew louder: one trick pony, can’t win the big game, no discipline, shitty mechanics, stupid decision maker, can’t read NFL defenses, gonna blow out his knee any day now.

People like me took it upon themselves to defend him: best athlete in football, if you could run like him you wouldn’t throw either, if you had his offensive line you’d take off downfield too, it isn’t his fault the Falcons defense sucks, next year is the year and so on.

This was an easy line of defense to take. In their entire history, the Falcons never put together back-to-back winning seasons, with or without Vick. He was so much fun to watch and didn’t seem to be quite the egocentric prick that so many star athletes can be. But then there started to be what the press refers to as “character issues” and what Squidbag contributors might call:

• Giving a woman genital herpes, then trying to hide it with an alias (Ron Mexico, of all names),
• Attempting to smuggle marijuana inside a fake water bottle through airport security (Note to Mike: it is dumb fuckers like you that give all the other dopers a bad name),
• Giving a full-on double-bird salute to the paying fans at the Georgia Dome,
• Watching his “crew” steal a Rolex at the airport (what is it with Mike & airports?)
• It seems like I’m missing something here…

So now Vick is going to cop a plea to felony dogfighting after his “crew” turned state’s evidence on him faster than you can say “5 years in federal ass-ramming prison and a half-million dollar fine.” This is the same “crew” he has sworn loyalty to since they were all roughnecks in Virginia Beach, and he was the fastest roughneck of them all. Unless he O.J.s out of this he is probably going to get a 52 week cement vacation. And his fine is going to look paltry next to the $20 million that Home Depot founder and Falcons owner Arthur Blank is going to wring out of his signing bonuses, which he now owes back. And oh yeah, his contract? The richest in the history of the NFL? It’s void. Even Nike kicked him to the curb. If Nike thinks you are a publicity liability, then you are; they would know.

So in fine Squidbag fashion I say “Fuck You, Michael Vick.” You had it all and you blew it. I hope you never play another down in the NFL. And if somehow you make it back, and actually start a game, you better not lose, or else some angry fan may take you to a purpose built shack on the dark edges of Flowery Branch and remind you what happens to dogs who can’t fight anymore."

Thank you guys, for being far more thoughtful on the issue than Vick deserves.  Gentle (and otherwise) readers, be advised that the Vick chew toy pictured above can be purchased for your dog here.         

Fish & Chips

Right now, my daughter is walking around the house with her bunny shoes on, waving a plastic bowl, knocking on doors and saying "hi" repeatedly, and with varying levels of enthusiasm, like someone practicing to do a commercial.  Max's first two days of school this week will be shortened into halves because of the extreme heat, and today I spent three hours on a project for a friend from my distant past with whom I have recently renewed my acquaintance.  I am tired and my stomach is vaguely upset.

This weekend past, I took the kids out of the house for the better parts of two days, so C could get some work done / some alone time.  On Saturday, post-agrarian field trip with mom and breakfast for Shannon, we bailed and drove to Chattanooga, the better to see the Aquarium there, and be treated badly by their poorly trained staff.  The aquarium itself is awesome (in the hundred million hot dog sense), don't get me wrong - the staff just sucks.  Abby likes being right next to the glass of the tanks, while Max digs anything huge and ugly.  Lampreys, eels, sharks, sturgeon, giant goddamn spider crabs - you name it, and he's excited to see it.  He also informed me that he's "into seahorses."  I personally liked the butterfly garden the best, but we all really liked the penguins - Abby bounced up and down in the stroller, squealing and clapping hands.  Penguins never seem to do anything the easy way, and they were crazy active.

In the car on road trips is a wonderful time to draw people out on esoteric subjects.  Max: "I like potato chips, because they remind me of Fall.  The crispiness, and the sound is like when you walk on leaves under your feet."  Wow.  Potato chips are forever changed for me now.

The following day, we went out together again, hitting a comic store & the Science center.  We also ate fish.  Max rented Scooby-Doo Meets Batman.  I haven't the heart to tell him.  Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go eat a pizza and read Annihilation: Conquest, because I am six issues behind.  At least.

Same Old Hotness

It's hot.

As I'm sure you're aware.  It's even hotter, though, when Nashville, TN breaks a 50 year record with the heat, recording 104 degrees in the downtown area, and you drive a fossil battle-damaged car from the late 80s with no A-to-tha-mothafuckin'-C.  So yes, my ass is still actually in my car, sweated off by me earlier on the way home.  Which is ridiculous.  Either the heat has modified my brains into noticing stuff I wouldn't otherwise, or it's cooked the grey matter of the folks in the other cars - and on the streets - 'cause I've been seeing some really weird behavior lately.  But there again - maybe it's always been there.

Driving out Monday morning, I glanced over to see a man shaving his face off.  Not just shaving in his car, which I've seen, but bleeding profusely from three or more places in the process.  Either he needs new shocks, a new razor, or just not to shave in his goddamn car.  I helpfully shouted such to him, but as it's hot, everyone else has their windows up, enjoying the A/C, not hearing my top-volume, custom designed wisdom.  I hate them.  I have a grey T-shirt in the front seat I wipe sweat on.  I don't even flare up my pipe on the way home anymore, because it's too hot.  I do sing along loudly to Stevie Ray Vaughn, Bobby Blue Bland, Vini & The Demons, and yell at NPR stories.  I find that helps.

Coming back from lunch yesterday, I saw a homeless guy pissing in the parking lot between the dumpster and where one of my co-workers parks his Mustang.  Again - not weird.  But this guy is carefully pissing in a bottle instead of letting fly against a fence, tree, or the dumpster, one of the most pissed on features of the urban environment.  When I went in to advise my colleagues of the odd pissing going on outside in the sweltering heat, I was informed that people on meth frequently do this to harvest leftover piss-meth.  Anyone else ever heard this?  It was after this we found porn in the other dumpster.

Max was drawing a picture of people with wings in his room tonight and didn't want me to see it.  My wife just dressed, got her keys and left suddenly, with no explanation.  My daughter's been cranky for about two days now, on and off.  Finally, in the category of How to Win Friends the Squidbag Way, we have this exchange with one of my co-workers from today, a man who's universally regarded as being absurd, smart-ass wank;

HIM: (busting through into the shop area) Hello, ladies!  (his regular standard greeting)  Catch you at a bad time?

ME: Anytime you're here is by definition, bad, by virtue of your presence.  What the hell do you want?

OTHER COLLEAGUE: Damn, I thought it was hot outside.  Do you smell a burn?  I smell a burn.

Stay cool, everybody.

A Complete Sentence!

And anyone who argues the point is in for a good bockwursting.

When you have kids, typically they start out as infants, and communication is conducted as a sort of one-way stimulus with heavy guesswork.  They cry, you run through the standard four needs: sustenance, cleaning, sleep & physical contact - then you just start trying shit, and you run with whatever seems to work.  I wish they spoke a lot sooner.  I know that there are scads of people mesmerized by the "ga-ga goo" baby phase of infancy and it's inherent cuteness, but I am decidedly not one of those people.  I am ready for the kids to talk about six weeks after they get here.  I felt that way with Max, I feel that way with Abby.  You reach those points of wire-thin patience and fist-clenching frustration where you want to look at the kid and say, "Just tell me what you need and I'll do it!"  Being a parent teaches you to actually listen to other people in a new way, and believe me, it's mind-blowingly great when the kids finally talk, when they actually convey, with words, so you don't have to guess, what they need or are thinking, or both.

Tonight, as I'm putting Abby into her cozy little seat which she will not sleep without, I kiss her goodnight and stroke her hair and rock her a little and then say, "Bye-bye Abby.  Goodnight."  This is the standard arrangement.  She broke protocol tonight, though.  "Dada no no bye-bye."  Six syllables, all put together, broadcasting a need.  So I stayed.  Of course I did.  You would, too.  I sat there in the mostly dark with her and rocked her and talked to her until she closed her little eyes and took the first really deep cleansing sleep breaths, and I touched her fine blonde hair and swelled internally with love and pride and all the good parts of having kids.

Mike Wieringo, 1963-2007

Mike Wieringo was a comics artist with a clean and engaging style that made you buy into the story and brought to life lots of action while maintaining a focus on minutiae and little idiosyncracies inherent in certain characters.  In short, even though his style was not super-realistic by any stretch of the imagination, he made you feel as though the people and things he illustrated were real, simply through consistency and detail.  He was a vegetarian, apparently, and all-around nice guy, born in Venice, Italy.  Unfortunately, he recently died of a heart attack at age 44.  He will be missed.  Mostly, I became interested in him through his work on the Flash, for DC, and his art on Fantastic Four, for Marvel, both with Mark Waid as scribe.  This is arguably my favorite FF run ever.  Get this if you want to see the 1st part of it.  There is more news about this here, and his blog is here.

Baby Huey Heads Home

Baby Huey - er, I mean, Karl Rove, the man known around the White House as "Boy Genius" (though clearly, his boyhood is best remembered in black and white) and also "Turd Blossom" (not kidding) has announced this week that he will be leaving the Monkeyface administration, "having done all the damage to this country's belief in democracy that I can possibly do."  Rove (pictured here defending the "size does not matter" dictum) also added that he would be spending more time with his family, who in addition to glistening while squirming in a pack under a rock and ingesting large mammalian fecal matter, have really been missing him.  Often given credit in the media and especially by intellectually average social conservatives for being "brainy" this man characterized himself as a white whale this week when comparing himself to Moby Dick as he is sought by Congress's Ahab to shed some light on stuff the White House has buried deeply.  Very deeply.  I don't know about the "Moby" part, but the "Dick" part is right on.  (Thank you, Ian Case.)  An overrated strategist, Rove tapped into that same underlying vitriol that makes Americans' root against a sports team rather than for one, and compels them to tune into fucking American Idol to see who gets belittled into obscurity next.  We also used to turn out for public hangings.  The politics of divisiveness constitute an easy and honorless tool to wield, and Rove was a master of breaking things down with it.  Described as "Bush's Brain" as though this was a compliment, and not akin to being described as "O.J.'s Conscience" or "Michael Jackson's Sense of Reality", Rove took pride in winning at any cost, and likely ended up with a soul not even the devil himself would want to sully his cloven hands.

I expect that he will write a book, because that's what these fucking people do.  It will be ghostwritten for Dubya, and will be drivel, a meaningless attempt to explain why we never understood them as well as we should have while they were in power.

Bye, Huey.