squidbag

NFL-uva A Problem

I don't know if you know this, but when you go on Facebook, take to comments fields and indeed, interject into actual IRL conversations stuff like "Abolish Football," you sound like an ignorant and hypocritical reactionary. I have this on good authority, too - mine.

Those of us who enjoy the game understand as best we're able that you wouldn't miss it - you don't "get" it and you never have, and this is the time of year that you get to feel superior to people who insist on watching a game. You don't "get" football in the same way that I don't "get" fashion, cat videos, reality TV, religion, blueberries and people who "don't read." "Getting" something is often a transcendant and ephemeral experience that is impossible to quantify for someone else. The act of even attempting to explain it renders the explanation useless. This much I understand. I also understand that when a thing is broken, our society conditions us to throw it away rather than fix it, and that this is perhaps not always the wisest or most responsible course of action, no matter what you reflexively fucking opine.

The NFL is indeed horribly broken - the culture of domestic abuse, so long the subject of studies and research, has now been captured in actuality on film and in photos, perpetuated by homunculoid creatures like Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson. The NFL's decade spanning cover up of the long-term affects of concussions and other head injuries to players (as chronicled here and here in League of Denial) was, perhaps, criminal, and certainly immoral. The way the organization inconsistently and laughably "enforces" its own rules - Sean Payton and Bill Belichick, I'm looking at you - erodes any faith the average person has in fair play at a high level. Most teams pay their cheerleaders minimum wage or less - exposure (no pun intended) is meant to be an intangible perk of the job. Insensitivity predominates: the Redskins steadfastly refuse to change their name, and no one's even talking about the Chiefs. To round this out, some quick names from recent history would include Pac-Man Jones, Tank Johnson, Michael Vick, and Plaxico Burress.

Some teams seem to have bigger problems as a franchise than others: Peterson's Vikings had a big rape party on a boat a few years back, but we have short memories, so no one's talking about that anymore, while Rice's Ravens had another famous Ray who may or may not have been a murderer, depending upon who you ask or what might have been in the backseat. Tennessee's Titans had a QB who threw his shoulderpads at fans, and there's also the murder of Steve McNair, shot by his mistress. The beloved Packers had the virulently anti-gay (and possibly racist) Reggie White, and let's not forget (no matter how much he'd like you to) Brett Favre's molestation charges and dick pictures. The Steelers still have a maybe-rapist at QB; the Cowboys have Jerry Jones. I'll just leave that last one for you to consider.

(As a quick aside: those of you upset at the appeal of Ray RIce's suspension? We're mad at the NFLPA, which is the Players' Union, not the NFL itself. Focus. Breathe.)

Teams aren't the league, though, even if the league is ultimately responsible for their (the teams and the players) behavior on some level; if the McFood down the street screws up your EggMac, Big Mickey doesn't care; it's the franchise owner who needs to work out the kinks in the production line, or he gets penalized. The same is true of players - they fuck up and we run to the NFL. Why? Why aren't we mad at the team first? The franchise? The owners and the coaches? Skipping the chain of command is illogical and counterproductive - I don't write the President over potholes.

So the league needs to make changes. Real ones, not whitewashing. Abolishing the NFL, or even football, (aside from getting low marks because of its inherent "never gonna happen" status) seems like a cheap and poorly thought-out workaround from what we really should be doing, which is teaching our (society's) men how to behave. You can't complain that we live in a culture where all the rules for not having rape happen are directed at women instead of the DON'T RAPE PEOPLE rule we should teach all men and everyone, and then let players off the hook for being criminal assholes by abolishing the league. Make the league clean up the mess, make players fix themselves and be accountable or they can all face crippling fines. If they go Chapter 11 because they can't clean up their act, good - but it will take a long time for that to happen, and in the meantime, a lot of women's shelters get funded.

Also: there've been 713 arrests in the last fourteen years of NFL players. Most of those are for domestic violence. In a given season, there are about 1700 active players in the NFL, most of whom are not fucking up. (Since we live in America, the fact that they have not been arrested or indicted means you are obligated to assume that most of them are not fucking up.) On the whole, the NFL employs about 15,000 people per season, directly, and that doesn't count the people who have jobs at various venues, or in any of the other industries associated with American football.

Abolishing the league because a great many - but not most - of the people in it are morally bankrupt man-children is like killing the guys on either side of the one who steps out of line. It's extremist. Is that who we are? If you watch The Simpsons, are you tacitly endorsing Rupert Murdoch & by extension, FoxNews? If you buy a General Motors vehicle, are you okaying potentially fatal cover-ups? If you're a Catholic or Muslim, does that mean you're fine with everything people in those groups do? By living in America, are you saying that you're okay with everything your government does? OF COURSE NOT. You're taking the bad with the good because wrecking the whole system, while sometimes the answer, usually isn't. Punk's great until you want to put out an album.

Replacing Roger Goodell is a sound move - he's a tool. He could probably be replaced with an automated "CYA generator" that just runs on a laptop and spits out hype and half-assed "solutions." He's obviously only concerned about PR (and money), and moves only when it benefits him (with money), so he needs to move on, now - I'd like to see the NFL run by a woman. Not a token figurehead - a woman in actual charge of football, making league changes.

Brain Music

Some songs in the right circumstances are like keys to doors to the past, for me, to my personal, individual past - a trip backwards in time where the word "nostalgia" seems like a weak attempt to explain what's actually happening, which is this:

The music keys off a series of tumbling domino memories which come unbidden and avalanche down onto whatever I'm doing or thinking at the time, erasing the present and overwriting the new/old into currency. I step backward into a previous version of me that is so different and pure and incandescent with supercharged potential and anticipation and unlocked grit-your-back-teeth-and-GAH! that it/he feels utterly alien, but I remember being there, then, him. I remember how the smells of those people around me made me feel, seeing them in my mind's eye, through my perhaps unconsciously edited memories of that time. I hear them and the spaces around them, I feel the anxiety and rush of events past. Hormones, surely, but I'm in touch with them now, and the rush of the chemical wave is something tangible, tasteable - it has mass and I carry it. It carries me.

I am transported - not through something so lame as the hackneyed and ham-handed "power of music" but along neural pathways I thought I burned out with injury and drugs and booze and sadness and happiness and new experiences long ago, but the brain abides. It pushes back against the present, be it mundane or thrilling or necessary or all three and says, "this is a thing that happened, this was a time you were in, these were people you knew, and all of it is still in here, locked behind a paper-thin Japanese sliding panel and it can be unlocked at any time by this song." Or not. It's not consistent. The subconscious must be in a mood to cooperate or you'll just get the song and "...yay."

And then, the tumblers in the lock click and slide and roll back the other way and I am left with a desperate need to preserve the experience by using what I know will be inadequate words, as best I am able, but with the hope of crystallizing what it was like, and maybe even sharing the ineffable with someone, anyone else.

Love & Trust

Trust is whether or not you can keep your mouth shut and believe that another person will properly operationalize your definition of "careful" while handling something precious to you like a fragile memento, sentimental antique, comic book, child or heart. The keeping your mouth shut is the hard part - you have to trust them enough to allow them to earn your trust - it must be filled as it gets used up; it's a perpetual emotion machine.

I promise not to do that again.

I love a lot of people I don't trust. Their presence in the world makes me happy, I'm glad they're around, but I wouldn't give them my important shit, and I damn sure wouldn't hand them my heart and feelings. Sometimes you come by that knowledge/realization the hard way, and sometimes you just know. Often, experience allows you to pick them out before you get your heart broken, and people mistake this toughness for wisdom. It might be both - I'm not smart enough to tell the difference.

I find that exposure (in terms of time) makes no difference here, some people will simply have your back, and others will not. Some of the people I feel this way about I have known for decades and spent lots of time with, others I hardly ever see.

I trust people I don't love; there is a kind of intense value that I place in a person who is loyal and honest and dependable which is like love without quite being love; a really intense form of like, a kind of love that Greek people probably have a word for and German people have a word to make fun of. The most interesting people in this category are folks who do or have done deplorable things but who are really decent to me personally - I like to think that this is indicative of an overall effort to be better, and I have to value that or I'd be a hypocritical bastard. Moreso. Again. Whatever.

That is all. I now return you to your Thursday, which I have decided to call Jerry. So enjoy Jerry.

Wonder Woman Unbound: Review

A bad thing is always worse when your expectations are high.

I had been looking forward to Wonder Woman Unbound for a couple of weeks before I got my hands on it pretty much for the same reason any fanperson looks forward to anything with Wonder Woman in it; she can be a great character and she's often underutilized and we should be talking about her more. We should have reasons to talk about her more.

But not like this.

This review will apparently be a minority report: most of the rest of the web is taken with this book, and gives it four stars, giving it high marks for revealing information heretofore unrevealed and dealing with the subject matter in a frank and open way, often incorporating some humor. I do not understand why this is: I found this book to be repetitive, ponderous, pedantic, repetitive, easily distracted (something like 30% of the book is about other heroes and villains used in a kind of failed compare-and-contrast), and while it was filled with a raft of research findings and presentations (and charts and diagrams and goddamn graphs), on almost every occasion, the conclusion drawn from the research was wrong, bad, or too simplistic.

The first part of the book, dealing with WW's origins in the mind of William Moulton Marston goes into details about his life that are not, by any stretch, revelations to either comics readers or students of modern psychology. Everything in the book about Marston can be found in this Wikipedia entry, this Comic Book Resources article, and this background piece on the Personality Profile Solutions website. In short: Marston was one of those brilliant people who hover on the edges of quirky weirdness, so in addition to giving the world Wonder Woman, DISC theory, and the polygraph, he also lived in a successful polyamorous relationship with two women, liked to be tied up, and thought women were not equal with men - he thought they were superior. So he's a controversial guy. None of what can be found in this book is new information - this is all out there, and has been. The only "new" argument that Hanley makes (and possibly the last useful thing in the book) is that Wonder Woman cannot simply be viewed (in her early years) as a feminist icon without taking all the bondage (which is proliferate) into account - to Marston, bondage was about trust, and relinquishing control, and he was personally into it, so it's in a high percentage of stories. However, WW always breaks free, breaks her bonds, and saves the day, so - what was your argument again, Tim?

Tim seems not to grasp that fictional characters with any staying power - Sherlock Holmes, Beowulf, Dracula, Wonder Woman, Batman, shit - even the fucking Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - are fodder for re-appropriation and reinterpretation. Was Tinky Winky gay? That big puffy bastard didn't even have genitals, but that didn't stop the Pride movement from having some Tinky after Falwell opened his useless yap. Likewise, WW is (or can be) what her fans want her to be. If you read a Batman story you don't like, no one's forcing you to incorporate that story into your conception of Batman. I, for one, think that the Killing Joke and Arkham Asylum are prettier than they are good, and neither is a good representation of how I think of Batman. The same is true of any character - if you don't think Coppola makes a good Dracula, then skip that one. If Gloria Steinem wants to take Women's Lib as an opportunity to re-create and reinterpret Wonder Woman for a new generation, then as long as DC's in on the game, who the fuck is Tim to tell them they did it wrong? Everyone will have their own mind's-eye Wonder Woman, and most of her modern adult fans think of her as Lynda Carter, a strong woman with a lasso on TV fighting for good.

Lynda Carter is mentioned on exactly seven pages of this book. Seven. Seven in like, 220-something. I actually stopped and said, "That's it?!?" out loud. Luckily, I often read when no one's around.

Hanley spends far more time bitching and complaining about various people's lensed interpretations of Wonder Woman, saving an especially vicious fork for Robert Kanigher, who wrote the title for longer than - I think - anyone, and whose worst actual sins are probably that he didn't take writing comic books very seriously and that he had a terrible temper. While not particularly enlightened, these are not original fuck-ups in the world of comics - and Tim knows this. He's a "comics historian," whatever the hell that means now.

Probably the trolliest part of the book is when Hanley exhorts us to step back collectively and re-examine Dr. Fredric Wertham. Wertham, due to his book, Seduction of the Innocent, and his subsequent testimony before congress about the ills and dangers of comics, is vilified by most modern-day comics readers, as well he should be, because he went over the top. Hanley needles us, reminding us that Wertham also did some good stuff - testified as to the harms of segregation, argued against the solitary confinement of Ethel Rosenberg - and that he had done a lot of research, so he might have had a point or two in Seduction. It doesn't surprise me that Hanley is blind to research bias, and can't see how some points of view - homophobia - might chip away at a person's overall credibility, since he later in the book asserts that some women "chose to be lesbians" during the women's lib movement. Tim, Tim, Timmy, Timothy. No, no. Some women may have chosen to experiment with sex or relationships with other women, but they didn't choose to be lesbians because they woke up one tired of the patriarchy. They may have wished that they could do that, but - well, Tim, maybe you haven't been paying attention over the last 20 years or so. It's also possible that you missed this entirely.

So yeah - at the beginning of this pointless murder of trees, Hanley dedicates it to his parents - my advice would be to let them have it. You have better things to do with your life.

SquidWordle

So a bunch of kids got the same assignment from their teacher today, and they all came into the library to make these using a couple of different sites. Since I had to help them install Java and help them print and so on, I ended up being exposed to this stuff over & over again. The site I used is called Wordle, and assuming Wordle can be used as a verb, I simply had it Wordle this page, the front page of the Squidbag. Go, look - Wordle your own stuff.

Always Words

It remains to be seen whether we, the human race, are capable of labeling without backloading a lot of assumed or misappropriated content.

"Calling a spade a spade" is one of those manly calls for simplicity and honesty which has its origin in the classical Greek (Plutarch) but that we avoid for the most part because of the history of racism that we can choose - or not - to backload into it. Even this exhortation for honest and brief naming of a thing sidesteps a deeper reflex of many people, which is to assume judgment attached to the naming of something. That is, people attach judgment to the very act of saying, because our words carry the baggage of history.

Indeed, simple labeling is actually a form of judgment, taxonomy is a classification, separation, distinguishing this thing from that. It is a mistake, however, to treat the words and phrases we use in everyday discourse, our everyday speech, with this kind of knife's edge precision, because while scientific classification is meant to be bloodless and free from passion, the things we talk about with each other most certainly are filled with emotion and perspective and personal experience. They have to be, or they wouldn't exist in the first place - or at bare minimum, they'd certainly be skull-bendingly boring.

When someone commits suicide, it creates a ripple of havoc that extends out into the world. In the case of Robin Williams, that ripple is huge, due to the impact of his life on this world of people. Part of the wave of havoc is the emotional reaction of the survivors, whose reactions are complicated. It'd be great, by comparison, if people were just "sad." That would be so much easier to deal with. But that's not how people work. Packed into the hole in your guts created by the tragic news of loss is a bunch of anger, confusion, guilt, and a desire to learn from the experience coupled with a sense of futility that as much as you'd like for no one to ever do this thing again, people are going to keep doing it.

So, then - taking a douche newsanchor to task for calling Robin a coward? He's a newsguy and should know better, but is suicide a cowardly act? To say that it isn't - ever - infers that choosing to live isn't braver than not choosing that, and I'd like to think that choosing living takes a hell of a lot more guts than choosing not to. By contrast, then, and in this context, suicide is a cowardly act. Labeling someone a coward over one act does not make sense, but calling the act what it is, again, in this context, is not inappropriate. We're angry with Robin for removing himself from our lives - people say dumb stuff when they're angry - it's just possible that the CNN guy needs to be cut some slack.

Neither is labeling the act "selfish" a completely wrong thing to do - suicide is, I believe, an inherently selfish act. Loading judgment into that word is the problem. Why do we have a problem calling the act of suicide selfish when it is entirely concerned with the self? Whether a person is capable or not of thinking of others at that moment does not enter into it; it is a self-centered act. Labeling the whole person selfish, or even the baseline connotative assumption that selfishness is always bad - these are what get us into trouble. Taking time for myself is selfish - taking too much time or all of the time would make me a selfish person. The rule of excess is important to remember. There's nothing wrong with sex or cheesecake - it's too much of either that lead to problems.

We invariably cast blame, and it is easy to blame the depressed person who killed themselves without acknowledging (as such knowledge was once thrust upon me) that depression changes brain chemistry and thus perception, and so the person who killed themselves may not have been looking at things in a way that non-depressed person - or perhaps even, any other person - can fully comprehend. You can't get inside someone's head, and you probably wouldn't want to. This is the thrust of the world filling up with "depression is a monster"-type articles. We need reminding.

It's also easy to blame others, but at the end of the day, if someone wants to kill themselves, they will, unless you rob them of their freedom, and even then, people find ways. The blame here is pointless. The best that we can do as the group left behind is engage in the previously mentioned exercise in futility - knowing that it will happen again, always, but trying your best to not have it happen once in a while. Those are called victories, because those individual people keep going, and that is a success.

To end, then: Robin Williams was an important part of my late-Middle and early High School existence. While my first memories of him are as Mork, obviously, he was in and out of my awareness until I got my hands on a VHS copy of A Night at the Met. I was amazed when I got it because Robin went from being goofy to being wise and livewire comedy genius in one hour. I must have played that tape hundreds of times, putting in my VCR and turn my TV's black levels up and falling asleep to just the soundtrack. Like a lot of people, I loved Good Morning, Vietnam, the Fisher King, One Hour Photo, his Genie & Fender the robot, and a bunch of other stuff, but A Night at the Met will always be Robin Williams for me.

Godwin's Lunch

I can't decide if my bread is openly racist, or just makes poor font choices.

Maybe it's just me (it isn't), but there's something Teutonic about the word "Whitewheat" as displayed here on this bread. This is not a font choice with which to hit a man who has to make sandwiches at 6 o'clock in the morning. The mind wanders. Maybe it's the pairing of the word "white" with this particular font, but there's something happening here that makes me think my bread was probably stomping around the kitchen in squared-off boots listening to crappy metal and shouting slogans before I came downstairs this morning. It probably heard me on the steps and concealed itself among the other products in the breadbasket like a viper, like a lit bomb, like a cancer.

My bread is planning something. My bread thinks that it is better than other breads, and will gather like-minded breads to the cause, demanding tests of toasting and crustily declaring itself the "final solution to hunger." Like yeast, it is active and rising. Look at how it proclaims its purity, free from the artificial preservatives, colors, flavors and corn syrups of what it likely thinks of as "mongrel breads." Peep the pairing of "healthy" and "white" across the bold red and black - an accident? Can it be a coincidence that this brand comes from "Nature's Own?" Everything else is "unnatural?" Happenstance? The hell you say!

I've got my eye on you, Whitewheat.

Firework Honesty

I think I should be allowed to work with fireworks companies on warning language and names for products:

"Warning: Use of this explosive as finale will lead to laughter from neighbors."

"Your Guess is as good as Ours."

"Appears to be dud; isn't."

"Potential Freddy Krueger Face Within."

"Advisory: Fizzles and Pops Unimpressively."

"Drinking+Fireworks=Fun!"

"Scatters Ash over Neighborhood Indiscriminately."

"Best when combined with corn syrup and fertilizer."

"Firework will smoke like a punk for 5 minutes, then explode when no one is looking."

"Fun Increased by Tying Fuses Together."

"Place face DIRECTLY Over Firework when Lighting."

"Explosives are a great segue."

"Remember to light in populated areas at least two days before appropriate holiday."

"Designed to vanish over neighborhood treeline."

"Irrevocably marks paint, skin, hair, siding, concrete, wallets."

"Roman Candles can be held in mouth."

"Warning: Never Goes Out."

"Good luck, sucker."

NAMES:

Loud Global Imperialism

'Splode.

The Unexpected

Dog Frightener

Wakey-Wakey Baby!

Just Pointless Smoke

Just Annoying Sounds

Whoops

The Second Coming

Human Torch

The Flamer

Ouch, #4

SkyScream

From Last Year

Mrs. O'Leary's Cow

James Brown at the Apollo 11

Rain of Voodoo Hellfire

Flak

Flaming Eagle Vomit

OK Corral

Sudden Blindness

Pyromaniac Disappointment

ThunderFist

Bitch Cassidy

Immediate Traumatic Stress Disorder

The Wolf Blitzer

The Sol Rosenberg

The Katy Perry

Scorched Earth

Autism Trigger

Death from Below

Ignored Safety Warning

WHAT?!?

Retinal Damage

Quintet of Similar Bang Sounds

Diminishing Returns

Driveway Scorcher

Neck Cricker

Oh, Shit.

Random BOOMS!

Seizure Inducer

Pull Up G-12

Enough Purple Fucking Sparks

Prolonged Golden Showers

Explodey Fishies

Nub Maker

Drunken Freedom Happening

Hate not Heritage

Cock Rocket Happy

Cheap Chinese Import

Run, You Moron

Goodtime American Fortune Blaster

Is That What It Does?

Send My Friend to Africa

This is Whitney. And Tanzania. We're trying to get them together.

As I sit here eating mango, my good friend, Whitney Flatt, who has helped with my mental health on more than one occasion, and who is, in all likelihood, one of the most giving people you will ever meet, should you be damned lucky enough to actually meet her, is trying to scratch together enough - well, scratch, to finance a trip to Tanzania, where she will speak Swahili, help those in need, and escape elephants. This is what I have pictured, anyway.

How can you contribute money and not read the rest of this entry? Well, you can click your happy ass on over to her project website at 2Seeds, throw in, and move on. But you'd miss your chance to read her answers to your collective theoretical questions about her journey:

Hey, Whitney - where the heck are you going?

I will live in a small village in the Usambara Mountains just outside the city of Korogwe, Tanzania. I will be a part of what is called The Bungu Project, a project that works in most host village and adjacent villages to diversify crop output and improve market access.

Who are you working for? Who's putting this thing together?

The 2Seeds Network, and despite the number "2" in their actual name, the artist currently known as Prince is not affiliated with their work. Wish he was, though - that guy's got deep pockets.

Okay, so what are you up to over there?

My official title is “Project Coordinator,” and for the last five years, Project Coordinators from 2Seeds have been partnering with 8 different villages around Korogwe. Our goal is to undertake agricultural and market initiatives that will foster human capital development. All that fancy lingo aside, our goal is to help people live the best lives they can possibly live, ascending from the confines of poverty.

As a Project Coordinator, I will not only plant and harvest crops with these partners, but I will also provide micro-loans for projects as well as help teach basic management skills, helping my partners run their own profit and loss sheets for agricultural/market initiatives. A lot of times in development work, the old adage of “teach a man to fish” versus “giving a man a fish” has been tossed around to describe how development should work. But 2Seeds doesn’t believe that our partners are inept or that they are incapable of knowing how to properly farm their own land. They simply don’t have the capital to invest in their land and/or take risks. So my role isn’t to teach a man how to fish; my role is to be there when he desires to buy the line, the hook, and the bait and to help him consume/market his catch in such a way that helps him move from subsistence farmer to one that makes a profit and removes himself from the cycle of poverty.

So, what; there's no actual fish involved?

No.

Okay, how much dough do you need?

$8,000. This includes everything from my living expenses to agricultural initiatives we’ll undertake in my village. Any amount that anyone can throw into the hat would be great, though - even if I get a whole crowd of people at just a few dollars each, there's some matching funds to be had, so in this case, every little bit does really, truly help.

How long are you going to be gone? 12 months, August 11, 2014 to approximately July 15, 2015.

Do you really have to learn Swahili before you go?

Yes.

Really?

Yes. There’s minimal English spoken in my rural village.

Last but not least, why should anyone give you money?

You get to become a partner in something amazing and help people live up to their fullest economic potential. Plus, people always complain that they never know how their money is being used when they give to charitable organizations. But when you donate to my project, you literally become a partner in my village. I am accountable to each of my partners and will give you updates every 6 months on how your funds are being utilized.

Convinced yet? It's so easy to donate to this project at this link, that you could have done it while you were thinking about doing it. Here again, too - ANY amount. Chuck a buck in the bucket, and if she racks up a bunch of folks, it's a good thing. And you know, if you've got more than a buck, she'd like to see that, too. Ask for more details. Ask for emails in Swahili. Tell your friends, family, foodie acquaintances, and your rich uncle. She's a little less than a quarter of the way to eight grand, and I think we should show her what anonymous strangers who claim to care about other groups of anonymous strangers can do while sitting on their asses at computers.

Don't you?

Abby is Eight

On the 24th, my daughter Abby turned eight.

To celebrate, she requested a "luau." Her internal definition of this was quite loose and involved fish, leis, pineapple, grass skirts, torches and music. The genesis of this was the end of the school year LAST year, when the class had a luau of sorts to send off the year. Apparently, she needed to make it her own badly enough that she hung onto it for a year.

I hung netting and bought pineapple, made mix disks and invited a bunch of girls over to bash the hell out of a Tiki head pinata in my front yard, infuriating the ill-behaved nextdoor neighbor girl who was pointedly not invited. There was playing in water, dancing, numerous ad hoc congaesque line dance-marching, making torches out of construction and tissue paper, and many Abby-chosen party foods like black olives, wasabi peas, beef jerky and multi-colored Goldfish. The girls crashed in the living room after midnight after watching (and singing along with) Frozen, which, I grant you, is perhaps an odd choice for a luau-themed event.

The following day, her actual birthday, she never made it out of PJs. They had a Wake 'n' cake 'n' bacon breakfast, followed by present opening and playing around until folks went home. She requested Chinese take out late in the day and spent relaxing time playing with her new My Little Pony and Lego toys, among others.

At eight, she is mercurial. She wakes up in a good mood and goes to bed grumpy. She loves and is fiercely loyal to her family and friends and quick to stick up for an underdog or smaller person. She likes to race my car to the stop sign in the mornings after I drop her with her walking partners, and thinks it's stupid that she has to ride in the back while still kind of wanting to keep her car seat. She hates when you won't listen. She is easily flustered by choice situations, especially when they are arbitrary. The other day she openly wept at the ZZ Ward song "Last Love Song," which is admittedly sad. She's excited about learning to REALLY ride her bike and her backstroke back this Summer. According to data collected by her mom this morning, she's on track to be about 6'1" when she's finished growing into her feet and legs. She generally has fewer bruises than she used to, but that's because she's getting better at stuff. She still needs to be tucked in every night, and listens to the same mix CD she's had for about a year.

Happy Eighth, Abby.