Dadaism

No this isn't about an artistic movement I only vaguely remember from Art History. This week's blathering is much more personal-the whole parenting thing.

Part 1: The wasteland
On the outside, I think, a lot of 20somethings think that parenting is kind of an end of the road--your life is over kind of thing. Not to mention the physical wasteland of toys strewn about, all of them lying in wait for that midnight run downstairs barefoot in the dark. Yellow Cheese Triangle. Yes, I speak of you and your many pain inflicted nights. Then there's the wasteland of personal fulfillment--the whole me time sorta goes out the window.

Part 1.5: Is it that bleak?
No.

Part 3: Let me explain what happened to part 2
A couple weeks ago I was talking to Grace about the fun of having a 2 year old and an impending stork delivery, and she said "You know you really need to write something about parenting. Part 2 was: Grace, your wish is granted.

Part 4: It's not what you think
Parenting is like the wild west. And you get to be Clint Eastwood or Annie Oakley (for you female types) [Maybe I should reference Buffalo Bill instead for a better parallel with Oakley? Nah. Eastwood is far too badass to leave out. I'd be like referencing a samurai flick without mentioning Akira Kurosawa or Toshiro Mifune.] Sure we all were kids, and our parents did a [fine/meh/wonderful/terrible/great/shitty/so-so/average] job raising us, so more of the same, right?

To me it feels a bit like playing God. But in a safe way. Sure we got to create life, and as parents we get to shape it. But we can't go willy-nilly. It's not like It's an easy process to start over, and god knows Sue'd kill me if I said, "Oh shit, we fucked up this kid, let's game over and start fresh." She's totally done being pregnant in a forever kind of way. And I can't blame her.

But it is a bit like playing God. We choose as parents what goes into their little impish minds (Molly is thoroughly an imp, no doubt there). They gestate and regurgitate in their own version. The rewards are amazing. Within only a couple years, you have this little creature that runs up to you and says "Bao Bao" [That's 'hug' in Chinese] because 1. she loves you and 2. she watches a whole freakin lot of Ni-Hao Kai-Lan. So I have a partially bi-lingual 2 year old in a language that I will never understand as well as her because she's at the language sponge age.

Other rewards come in all kinds of packages from the Daddy-just-got-home-from-work-excitement to an un-prompted Thank You or random hug. Show them love and attention, and man, Kids rock.

Part 5: What about that imp thing?
Yeah, Kids can give you fits too. They give us fits every day. It's part of parenting, and in a way like Stress exercise. How much kid insanity can you take without losing your cool? Tonight, my daughter decided to drink the bathwater [something that we've been yelling at her for for, um, forever]. Not only because doing so is gross, but because she could choke. Well guess what, tonight she choked on it. I was right there, and averted crisis in seconds. But Sue, also FLEW up the stairs, terrified that something happened to her baby. This leads to part 6

Part 6 : Redbull may give you wings, but parenting gives you superpowers
Holy hell. Being a parent allows you to somehow slow time down sometimes and catch children that are mid fall from 30 feet away when you have a herniated disk, broken leg, and are wrapped so tight in a snuggie that you're certifiably mummified. And it's instinctual. I don't know how we do it, but parents get the powers to SAVE LIVES pretty regularly. And we do it on not a lot of sleep

Part 7: Caffeine, a father's reprieve
You know that bullshit line, "Females are the weaker sex?" Childbirth aside, try raising small children that don't sleep well. Then try it without caffeine. Why? Because moms don't get that chemical stim fix like us dads if they're pregnant or breastfeeding. But yet they carry on just as well. Wives/mothers of the world, you rock. For us dads, we may get a little more sleep and get to dope up on [Coffee, Tea, Monster, Redbull, PowerEdge, Mt. Dew, Coke], but it's also our duty to not bitch about being tired, ever. And if you can let the wife sleep in, for god sakes do it.

Part 8: It's an adventure and a half
Last Night, after class, my Daughter, who realized it had finally stopped raining, called me on a promise I'd made to her when she woke up first thing Monday. I'd said, "We can go out and play with your chalk [sidewalk chalk received from Aunt Yam on Sunday] as soon as it stops raining." So at 7:30 Molly and I are outside in the freakin cold wind drawing on our porch. Yet despite the somewhat miserable conditions, Molly came up with a really hilarious game. I had to draw letters of the alphabet. Then she would dictate how many times you had to stomp on said letters. Stomping had to involve silly walks [ala Monty Python's Ministry of Silly Walks], and it was pretty constant. So despite being cold, it was actually a lot of fun.

Part 9: The Caveat
What I'm trying to say here is that parenting is indeed about the best thing I've ever done. And since I'm on vacation from everything but teaching, I'm happy to say that I'd be real glad to be a stay at home dad if I could. Here's the caveat to all of this though: Most Americans, I think are far too lazy and narcissistic to actually be good parents. It's evident in our legislation where people feel the need to try and control maturity ratings on music and games. Good parents don't need this kind of gov'ment policing, because they know what their kids are capable of handling. And it doesn't take much to be involved with kids; they crave attention.

Outro
Parenting rocks.
[this post partially written while rocking Jack to sleep].

Begins Here One Hundredth Account of Operative Me

Or, how to get teenagers, dildos, sodomy, terrorism, Wal-Mart, school shootings, and the word "Chesticles" together in one book.

Wow. Before I begin, I just realized this is post 100. [Insert small party here.]

Today, it's all about Chuck
Palahniuk. Specifically Pygmy, his latest (2009) tromp into the world of decidedly disturbing distopia. Two things before I get going: 1. I like Palahniuk. Even when his writing isn't grand, I still like him because he's got the balls to say and do shit that stuns even my thoroughly desensitized core. 2. I'm pretty thoroughly desensitized (which is a good trait to have when you read Palahniuk. Especially considering that people faint at his readings from his wonderfully visceral descriptions.)

With finishing Pygmy, I've now read half of Palahniuk's library, and I have at least two more of his books sitting unread on my shelves. I generally like the guy.

Pygmy the book
A coupla weeks ago we took a trip up to Borders (a store I usually avoid because hours will pass and wives and children will murder me for getting lost in the stacks for too long) and I decided to finally blow the gift card I got at Christmas. I settled on this book because, knowing my reading time constraints, I needed something that would be both interesting and a fast read.

Overall the book has a very promising premise. From the jacket, "Pygmy, one of a handful of young adults from a totalitarian state sent to the United States, disguised as exchange students...all the while planning and unspecified act of massive terrorism....It's a comedy. And a romance." Thoroughly Palahniuk, right? Add to it the fact that the entire book is written in very poor English, which though difficult to decipher at first, manages to maintain a consistent and logical flow to it.

I've long been a fan of books that play with dialect, and this application, of foreign English worked very well and in a humorous way without relying on custom grammar rules. Here's a fine example:

Magic quiet door go sideways, disappear inside wall to open path from outside. Not total all glass, extruded aluminum metal frame silver edge, doors slide gone until reveal inside stand old woman, slave woman appareled with red tunic, spring apparatus gripping tunic front to hang swinging sign, printed, "Doris." Ancient sentinel rest gray cloud eye upon operative me, roll eye from hair and down this agent, say, voice like old parrot, say, "Welcome to Wal-Mart." Say, "May I help you find something?"....
Smile of operative me say, "revered soon dying mother, distribute you ammunitions correct for Croatia-made forty-five-caliber, long-piston-stroke APS assault rifle?" (Palahniuk 9)

It's both quirky and entertaining, and not so distracting that it breaks down the overall flow of the narrative.

Palahniuk also plays it smart with the actual nature of the terrorists. First, he casts them as kids, making it more difficult for a redneck America to redflag bomb these would-be killers before they get a chance to reciprocate. Second he doesn't show the terrorists doing things that you'd expect right off the bat. Sure the ultimate plan is to kill millions with some type of bomb, but the going about that isn't as you'd expect. And this is typical Palahniuk--always twisting away from what you'd expect; it's one of his primary modes of building tension.

One of my big worries with this novel is that it's structure, consisting of thirty-six dispatches would not be explained. Since we have a metafictive setting of the main protagonist telling his own story, the vessel of that telling needs to be explained. Sadly many books don't do this; they set up the story within a story for effect and don't really explain the purpose of said effect, and thus destroy the relevant power of using metafiction in the first place. Since I'm writing this more in book review style than literary analysis style, I'm not going to reveal the purpose for this structure, but know that my need to have well formed metafictional structures in books was satisfied.

I've said a number of good things here about the book; but if you look over to my GoodReads account, you'll see I only gave it two stars. Why? Well, while this was an enjoyable quick read kind of book it lacked the oomph that other Palahniuk books like Rant and Invisible Monsters, carry. And unfortunately, like Haunted, (and from what I hear Snuff as well), Pygmy relied far too heavily on the shock factor. Very early on in this book Pygmy does something pretty hideous, and Palahniuk apes that image throughout the rest of the book. While I'm desensitized enough to not be bothered by things like this, it seemed like he was trying to use this to build a lot of reader revulsion for the Pygmy's character, you know, cut him way down before building him up, and in the long run, this wasn't enough for me. The overall character growth was marginal, and I'm not entirely convinced that the outcome was entirely earned.

And for all the effort that went into generating a novel in broken English, the overall net effect is that the novel becomes sparse. Weighing in at only 241 pages, there isn't a whole lot to work with to start with, and with the added weight of broken English, the narrative became somewhat scattered and choppy, skipping and jumping across a fairly decent span of time (the dates are all purposefully blacked out, so I can't give the span, but I'd expect at least 4-6 months).

The book was funny and quirky, but not one of Palahniuk's best.

Hello World, Jack Chaucer

Today at 5:10 PM, Jack Chaucer came out just in time for dinner. Sue did most of the laboring at home, arriving at the doc's this morning already dilated 3cm. Jack was born after only about two hours of active labor--way less than the 30 hour labor-a-thon she had to go through with Molly. Despite this, Sue says Boys hurt so much more. Thank goodness he's out and everyone's safe and happy. 8lbs 9oz. 20.5 in.

Molly's doing well with the change. She was real quiet at the hospital; I've never seen such a serious look on her face. But on the way home, she started to open up a bit. "Jack no like the baath," she said, "He mad." And she was right; Jack was not at all a fan of his first bath. Otherwise though, he seems like a pretty happy kid. Here's to hoping that everything continues to go well.

Nine Weeks

So this week marks week 9 of the Spring semester. While a good many of my students are living it up in exotic locations and participating in drinking sex parties, I'm thinking about the state of things.

The [soon to be] kid
or sir not appearing yet. Jack's officially due on St. Patty's day. Everyone's hoping for something sooner. Tomorrow would be nice. Seriously. [Jack, are you reading my blog yet? If not, well get with the times, son].

The [insane] kid
Yep. Totally bonkers. Molly is so endearingly crazy that my teeth fall out only to grow back in again so that they can fall out more. About this, she says, "Do you like it, Daddy? Do you lub it? I lub it Daddy. Daddy. Daaaady. Awwww sooo Cuuute." [all of this followed by her trying to bite my nose--a game I started except that she uses her teeth and really does try to bite it off]

The [omfg get this baby out of me] pregnant wife
She's done. The bellybutton's popped. Get that kid out before I become collateral damage in a pregnant lady in pain rampage.

The Writing Front
At present I'm arming the mail cannon to fire a story to the Colorado Review for the Nelligan Prize. It'll likely be my only contest submission this year (despite the grave odds). But 1. I'm broke 2. I'm only entering because most pubs don't consider anything over 3k words let alone stories [like mine] that are largely over 10k.

The Cats
Hey cats, quit barfing. k thx bye.

The student blogging project
Totally kicking myself for not making the students post comments on a regular basis. Just about all of them are gung ho on waiting till the end and posting all 30 in one day. So much for blogs being a gateway to conversation and an extension of class discussions. Sigh. Also too bad since many of them are posting some real good content that could/should get some discussion face time.

The Dayjob
I like working for a truly global company. I have some German coworkers that don't mind me fumbling around in German in an attempt to get better. Plus, with database work on top of that, I'm both blissfully busy and working on stuff that doesn't make me hate life. Who'd a thought that?

D&D
Shut up. Yeah, Sue and I started throwing together some stuff for a new campaign last night. I love the early planning stages of new campaigns. It's the middlish parts where Sue expects me to have some kind of plan (at which point I've been gunning by the seat of my pants for far too long) that I start to fizzle and want to take a break. Here's to hoping for a nice long run on this new bit.

Reading
Joey Goebel's Commonwealth -- Nightly reading to Sue. Gotta love Goebel.
Chuck Palahaniuk's Pygmy -- Lunchtime at work reading. meh. I'll finish it soon.

In Praise of Pat Rothfuss

So wayback in grade school I got hooked on D&D, and started reading just about every single TSR produced book out there; especially the Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, and Ravenloft series. For most of highschool I read nothing but TSR fantasy and D&D rulebooks. And while I did branch out a little and read some Robert Heinlein and David Eddings, I stayed pretty true to the D&D offerings.

Then I started up college, and around started reading literary stuff. And with that came a sense of academic snobbery--the notion that the genre fantasy that I loved was somehow not good enough, and that I needed to aspire to higher things. Of course I was too young in my English career to feel that I had the authority to challenge the status quo, so I found new loves: postmodernism, experimentation, etc ad nauseum.

And my fiction, too, shifted away from fantasy into experimentation and postmodern screwity. But always in the back of my head, I've wanted to get back to the ole roots, and write up some worthy fantasy.

Back in November, I started just that with my NaNoWriMo project. And as soon as the semester's over with, I plan on setting up a regular writing schedule of no less than two nights a week to Sally Forth on said worthy fantasy project.

So how does all of this tie into Patrick Rothfuss? I'll tell you.

Rothfuss author of The Name of the Wind, is the kind of author that we all sort of envy. He had the testicular fortitude to draft up a giant novel over a period of (I think) seven years or so, and then publish it. And by Giant, we're talking rivaling Dostoyevsky. But in a good way (and not to bash Dostoyevsky, I love him, but today's kids...not so sure about that). Anyway, Rothfuss writes and eventually publishes this massive book. It's meaty, it's tasty, it has character development, and goddamnit the language isn't garbage. So, in short, it's fantasy, but fails to fall into any of the genre-pitfall traps that snooty folks poo-poo at when they condescend to genre writers.

Rothfuss not only has an ear for the natural flow of language, but because the story is told largely via dictation, his word choice necessitates such careful selection. And not only that, but he handles for a lot of the common type plot holes you'd see. The most obvious being, how can anyone dictate dialogue from years ago, or how can anyone conceivably keep up with the dictation. All of this is handled in the book in a natural, "Oh yeah that makes sense" kind of way. And that's how the whole book is largely. It's a rampage that somehow manages to take its time but also build incredible strong tension.

I read this book aloud to my wife in our nightly reading. Usually we read about a chapter's worth, but there were days where we'd read 50-70 pages in a drop without stopping. While that may not sound like much, keep in mind that reading aloud nets you, maybe 5 pages in 10 minutes.

And so dovetailing in with all of this is the fact that I received this copy from my best friend as a gift with him saying, "When I read this, it reminded me of how your fiction would look if you wrote fantasy."

I can say I'm deeply humbled by such a compliment, and also, driven to live up to it.

So long of the short, Pat, thanks for rocking out a fan-damn-tastic book. Thanks for paving a new road into the world of fantasy literature.