Shy guy

I was just paying a visit to Gentle Reader Christy's blog, and I found myself identifying some with one of the people she was describing. This fellow was a kind, gentle father and husband with a severe case of depression, and Christy found him to be very shy. That prompted memories of the days when I wore a younger man's clothes (though I'm hardly a Piano Man).

My inherent shyness was very painful growing up--so painful that I can see how it could tie into a serious case of depression. The thought of asking a girl on a date absolutely terrified me, and, outside of the purely academic realm, I lacked the self-confidence or courage to assert myself in the slightest. That kind of shyness strikes at the heart of the human ego and at the heart of the stereotypical concept of masculinity in America. I'm sure anybody whose read my stuff for very long knows that I have real issues with notions of ego and masculinity. There are other reasons I've always been tied up in knots over such things, but my inherent shyness certainly is one of them. My wife thought I was something of an stand-offish, snooty asshole when we first met, but she told me it was kind of endearing. She couldn't figure me out for the longest time (she's standing here telling me this as I type). My brash, outgoing Internet alter-ego is the exact opposite of that person--a shadow poser piece, I suppose. The current me falls somewhere in between. I suppose it's only natural that I eventually would gravitate to a philosophy that downgrades the ego.

I can think of a few factors that have been significant in making me a more assertive person. The first, I suppose, was that I was always relatively successful academically. Second, I managed to assemble a group of wonderful friends over the years, people with whom I grew confident in discussing whatever was on my mind or in my heart. I've made a point of staying in touch with a few of these friends, even if we do live far apart and never actually see one another IRL. Third, my profession requires a certain degree of assertiveness, and, after a while, it dawned on me that I'm not half-bad as a lawyer. Fourth, my adult involvement in the LDS Church saw me in various positions that required me to gin up the confidence to interact--and initiate conversation--with a wide range of people. Fifth, there's nothing more effective at making anybody get aggressive than advocating for one's own children. I've been surprisingly assertive, yet diplomatic, with the various systems that have been involved with us over the years. Sixth--and back to my shadow poser piece--the anonymity of the Internet has allowed me to express ideas more forcefully than I might express them in person. And, of course, I've made some real friends via the Internet.

Good gosh, I'm talking about my personal shyness on the effing Internet. There's something not quite right about that.

Dharma Warrior and "The Mormons"

I actually found myself watching most of PBS's "The Mormons." On Monday, we were channel-surfing, and I put it on an A&E rerun of "The Sopranos." However, it wasn't one of the better epsiodes, and DW turned it to PBS. Last night, I got back from the Zen center and found DW watching part deaux. She commented about how she had forgotten much of the early history of the LDS Church. She is a multigenerational Mormon, so that history is her history. I'm a second-generation Mormon, so I can't personally lay claim to that history. Moreover, it's a fascinating history, the bad along with the good, and it's a shame more people don't know much about it.

The post I originally drafted about part one used a comment by feminist Mormon Margaret Toscano as a jumping-off point to discuss how, since my early teens, I've been tied up in knots over specific personal issues that somehow got whooshed up with the Church in my mind. On the drive home last night, I remember that a Zen author--I think it was Kosho Uchiyama--described zazen as a sword that cuts through the knots in one's mind. I was pleased by the image of myself as a dharma warrior, chopping away at my own mental knots.

Not even part two of "The Mormons" could mess with that image, and a number of the issues that have bothered me about the Church were discussed during the segments I saw. That's not to say I've changed my mind about any of these things; I guess I've just gained enough distance from them that I can look at them without investing much emotion into them. I suppose it helps that I never experienced first-hand the pain of people like Trevor Southey and Margaret Toscano, who were formally expelled from the LDS Church and were rejected by their loved ones, while I just slowly drifted away. Were I in the position of people who had been kicked to the curb on the basis of my scholarship (Toscano) or my sexuality (Southey), I'm sure I would still feel very hurt by it. Come to think of it, I'm still a little stung by the way my family was rejected by the local congregation. So, with the metaphorical sword of zen in my right hand, I walk the path of the dharma warrior, chopping away at those metaphorical knots. Now, the thought of me carrying a sword of any kind is pretty damn ridiculous; it's just one of those zen paradoxes.

ETA: The photo of Kosho Uchiyama I originally posted here disappeared, so I replaced it with the hand of Uma Thurman.

Day by the Sea

Yesterday saw us at Gulf Shores, Alabama, for the first time in several years. We used to go there freqently, as it's only about 3 hours from our house. It's something I highly recommend. We had a wonderfully lazy day in the Sun.

I took along some reading material, and I read an article about the railroad from inland China to Lhasa, Tibet. The train is controversial for political reasons, but the engineering is brilliant. It was ironic, I suppose, to sit on a warm beach and read about a train that runs across permafrost at an altitude of up to 16,000 ft. Also ironic in the article itself--China's ongoing effort to settle more Han Chinese in Tibet has resulted in Tibetan Buddhism becoming cool in other parts of China. I also got to the midway point of Doris Kearns Goodwins' Lincoln biography, which I hope to finish in the coming week. I'll write up a review of this excellent book when I'm done with it.

Oh, yeah, the beach. With middle age has come the wisdom to recognize that I'm a very white guy. Heavens, I'm pasty. I've resorted to using my kids' Water Babies sunscreen. My skin turns only one color in the Sun, and it ain't tan. Also, I have a mess of freckles on my back and upper arms--more than I used to--which gets DW a little concerned about my Sun exposure.

There are a few things that mid-40s, overweight men really should know better than to do. Posing on the beach appears to be one of them. But then, I am a Poser, after all.

Randy's self-improvement program number 7,624

I seem to be in self-improvement mode these days, even if my program has kind of come together gradually and without any real planning. I've been working seriously on my cardiovascular system for several months, and have taken off 20 pounds. I recently added some light weight training to my exercise agenda. I've been meditating more frequently and longer; for whatever reason, zazen really works well for me. Moreover, my therapy is going well at the moment, though that can be difficult and painful at times. Also, as compensation for the loss of Gentle Reader Craig's brain-stimulating blogs, I've resorted to reading publications like the Times Literary Supplement and the New Yorker--and even some real books--to keep in touch with the world of people who are smarter than I am. But, not to worry, I still dig Entertainment Weekly.

As part of my ongoing quest for cultrual relevance, I have changed my google/blogger avatar from Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus to Sanjaya Malakar from "American Idol." I wonder what my boss would do if I showed up at work with my hair like that.

Rough Audience of One

My youngest son, A., didn't much care for our new backyard swimming pool this past weekend. He played in it for a little while Sunday night, then again Saturday morning, but he had another place in mind for water play. Because A. is nonverbal, and because he employed trickery in an attempt to manipulate us, it took us a few minutes to catch on. He picked up swim suits and pointed out back, then, once he had a suit on, he ran to the front door, dropped to the floor and threw a tantrum. He wanted the beach, dammit, and that swimming pool was an inadequate substitute. This happened twice. And some people say children with autism are incapable of manipulating people . . . I would have just taken him, but he'll only let himself be driven around in our older car, which was making some odd noises, and which is in the shop today.

On Saturday morning, I took A. on a 4-hour walking tour of WalMart and the local mall. A. loves to watch the automatic doors open and close at WalMart, and he enjoys watching other kids at play in the video arcade and stuffed-bear "factory" at the mall. He also loves the lettering on the outside of Dillard's department stores. The local mall has two separate Dillard's stores, and there's another Dillard's sign at another mall entrance, so we essentially circumnavigated the mall, on foot, at a running clip. Moreover, the food court sells pizza and ice cream, and I had to make two pizza purchases and two ice cream purchases. Saturday evening saw us back at WalMart and the local park; Sunday morning had us at WalMart once again, making a circular route from one bank of doors to the other, both inside and outside the store.

A. was jealously possessive of your humble host over the weekend, and he demanded my undivided attention. When I wrote out some bills, he misbehaved to get me back into his room. He was in such a daddy mood that he wanted nothing to do with DW all weekend, though he usually is perfectly willing to include her in his play. Not this time. It stung her, and it took us a while to figure out what was going on with him on that issue.

A. was upset when we got back to St. Mary's yesterday, and I was exhausted from the weekend and the drive up. The nurse and one of the other parents commented that I looked like I was about to cry. Actually, no, I wasn't, but DW and I both frequently feel that way when we take our kids back to school, and we both have been teary in the car on the way home. Those moments of separation are emotionally tough for all four of us, though A. and T. are amazingly courageous and tough, and, by all accounts, get past the separations rapidly.

Yesterday, however, I did not get past the moement of separation very quickly. Last night, I lay awake thinking about how odd our family situation really is and how difficult it is on all of us--especially the boys, who can't understand why things are the way they are, or that they are progressing much better at St. Mary's than they ever did in the chaos of our home before they went there. I thought about DW's expectations of motherhood, which were shattered by her difficult pregnancies, then by A. and T.'s brain disorders. I thought about the contemptable people who make up what used to be my family of origin (I cut off all contact last year), and how much I still despise them for their ignorant, judgmental disapproval of, well, damn near all of our parenting decisions from day one. They can all go to hell. I had a very hard time getting to sleep, and I'm thoroughly exhausted today.

I'm reading Doris Kearns Goodwin's "Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln" at the moment. Last night, I read about Edwin Stanton's deep love for his family. After his first wife died, the future Secretary of War was concerned that his then 2-year-old son would grow up with no memory of his mother. Stanton spent his free time writing a 100-page letter to the boy, explaining how much both of his parents loved him. I can't speak for DW, but that struck me as something I might want to do. I know A. and T. feel loved--by us and by most of the staff at their school--but I'd really like to them to understand how deeply I feel about them. If, sometime after DW and I are dead and buried, my kids' conditions are cured and they are capable of deeper understanding of the world around them (and I see more and more signs that their understanding is expanding, despite their limitations), I would like for them to know how deeply DW and I adore both of them. I suppose I could have such a letter placed in our estate planning papers.

Dystopian dilemmas

With many predominantly Caucasian Western countries concerned about immigration, and European countries in particular concerned about their low birth rates, it seems logical that those two concerns would be brought together, first in a novel, then in a movie. I haven't read the book, but I saw the movie last night on DVD. "Children of Men" takes those issues to extremes--a world in which infertility and immigration are the only issues anyone cares much about. I suppose that there's an unspoken metaphor for First World countries becoming impotent and sterile when they close their borders, needing infusions of life from the Third World. I don't know that the metaphor really works precisely with the entire world infertile, so maybe I'm reading too much in. I don't know.

The movie opens with the death of the youngest person on Earth, an 18 year old. For an unknown reason, the world has became completely infertile in 2008-09. Why, exactly, is a source of some conversation in the movie. The movie ends with the first birth in 18 years, to an African woman who evidently is an illegal immigrant to Great Britain. A pro-immigration terrorist organization plans to smuggle the woman to an underground fertility organization. Our reluctant hero, Theo (Clive Owen) is shanghaied to assist the woman, and there are several post twists along the way.

My viewing of the movie was informed somewhat by a couple of things. First, I recalled reading about some recent research suggesting that my own childrens' disabilities may have beeen caused by genetic quirks that, in turn, may have been caused by environmental events. Moreover, many parents of autistic children believe that childhood vaccines either caused their childrens' disorders or triggered whatever genetic predisposition may have been there. So I suppose anything is possible. Fortunately, however, the only truly universal environmental phenomenon of which I'm aware is global warming, which doesn't appear to have any genetic consequences. Second, all aspects of modern civilization pretty much collapsed around here in August 2005; I was thinking a little about that as I watched the brutality of the government and the deplorable living conditions of the illegal aliens in the film. If you think it can't happen here, you could be wrong.

"Children of Men" raises questions about the environment and, more directly, about migrations of people from the Third World to the First. For me, the movie was more provocative and thought-provoking about the latter question than was "Babel." It also presents a society without hope for a meaningful future. There is even a suicide drug in the film. It made me reflect on what a gift life, and future generations, really are. "Babel" was somewhat more hopeful, anyway. This is a movie that you'll think about for a while after seeing it, whether or not you agree with its politics. The acting, directing, and writing are quite good, and the action moves along at a good clip. Much of the story is told in the background visuals, which is a great technique. Check it out.

Superpower Stamps

I went downstairs to the post office this morning to mail my federal income tax return. The USPS is selling D.C. Comics superhero stamps, and now Batman adorns my annual submission to the IRS.

Easter 2007

We filled our kids' Easter baskets with items they currently enjoy. I'll confess that I had a brief brain fart yesterday and forgot what Easter is all about, other than it has something to do with Jesus. Oh yeah, it's only the central event in human history from a Christian perspective, something you'd think I would remember. Oops. Bad Randy! Good thing DW never reads this blog. Today, I'm fighting off some nasty gastro-intestinal infection that struck with a vengeance around 2:00 a.m.-4:00 a.m. today. Could it be divine retribution?

Unfortunately, every photo I took of T. came out bad. So here's a recent picture of him on the beach instead. We noticed last weekend here, and the other day in Alexandria, that T. is far less intense and high-strung than he has been in months. Also, he didn't request French fries until the very end of our visit with him. Last week, he wanted them every time we got anywhere near a McDonald's.

We spent three Easter Sundays in a row attending mass at the St. Mary's chapel. Last year was a fiasco, as A. and T. both wanted to get out of there as soon as they saw us. This year was an unchurched holiday, at least for DW, A., and me. T. went to the usual Sunday morning service. We split our visits with the boys, taking each one individually. A. and I attended a morning service at the Alexandria Temple of Commerce, a/k/a WalMart.

A. looks joyously at his favorite work of art, the Pepsi logo on the drink machine in the WalMart foyer. I wore a Pepsi T-shirt while I was with him, knowing how much he loves that logo, but he didn't seem to give a hoot about it. I look really fat in the photos, despite having taken off some weight, so I'm not posting them.

A. loved his plush toys. We had an interesting moment yesterday, after A. overstuffed himself with Chips Ahoy cookies and Barq's root beer. We were in the pool, and he coughed, barfing up his snack. Hilariously, we were the only people who got out of the pool. Other people saw it, but evidently thought nothing of it. A. later had a great time stuffing himself at his favorite restaurant.

Overall, it was a very good weekend for my family.

Daily Zen

That the self advances
And confirms ten thousand things
Is called delusion;
That the ten thousand things
Advance and confirm the self
Is called enlightenment.

- Dogen (1200-1253)

Weekend at Randy's

It looks like those inflatable-rim swimming pools are a thing of the past at my house. We went through a couple of those every year--the kids inevitably would lean on the rims until they created a leak, deflating the rim and causing the water to pour onto the ground. They loved watching the water cascade from the pool onto the ground. That's nice and all, but not very efficient or environmentally responsible. Either DW or I would go outside and pump up the rim every 15 minutes (if the kids were actually playing in the pool) and/or refill the pool several times a day. Well, it's not like water is a scarce resource in Louisiana, but still. I picked up a rigid-framed pool at WalMart a few weeks ago, and used it for the first time this past weekend. T. loved it, especially when he ginned up the will to jump from the top of the ladder into the water. I like it too, and I'm sure I'll be going out back for the occasional dip. Speaking of T., a little parental bragging is in order. For months, he has been having me draw little pictures for him, then refusing to put pencil to paper himself. He had me buy him a little device the other day that has an erasable screen underneath a tiny computer screen that shows how to draw various shapes, letters, and numbers. I caught him drawing a rectangle and bisecting it, which is one of his favorite pictures for me to draw. I think he wants perfection before he lets me see anything he draws.

I had an interesting experience at Target the other night. T. and I were in the toy section, and he was interested in a Dora the Explorer cash register that I didn't want to buy. I diverted his attention to a toy cell phone, then put him in the cart to leave the store. There was a gentleman speaking on his cell phone in what sounded like German, watching his son at the Thomas the Tank Engine display. As I walked past him, he asked whether T. is autistic. It turns out that his 3 year old was diagnosed a few months ago. The father is in the flooring business, and they moved here recently due to the favorable environment for people in the construction trades. He needed to talk, so we conversed while T. was staring at that cash register, which was by now directly in front of him. I ended up having to buy the dang thing, but it's still in the original packaging, so maybe it'll go back. OTOH, T. is learning about money, so it might not be a bad thing to have. The German fellow made one observation about America that I found interesting--he said that in Berlin, you take your kids to the park and see the same people over and over, making friends along the way. In America, OTOH, you never see the same people twice at the park. That frustrated him, as his son really has no friends. However, the boy is in school, which is where we Americans probably pick up most of our friends.

The "Raising Arizona" theory of autism?

A new study using new imaging techniques has discovered missing and/or extra pieces of DNA in cases of autism where the disorder cannot be genetically traced to the parents. Strangely, I couldn't find this article in the online version of Science Magazine. I'd like to read the study before I draw any conclusions from it, but it sounds as if it might give some support to my personal theory that there are different causes for autism, some genetic, some possibly not. This blurb makes it sounds as if the authors concluded that the DNA quirks arose spontaneously in the father's semen or the mother's egg, soemthing that sounds, well, quirky. I'd have to see that spelled out. It reminds me of that character in "Raising Arizona" who couldn't sire children because of his bad semen. In any event, that seems to beg the question what caused the DNA anomalies, whether they arose in the parents' reproductive material or in the children themselves. That the question is begged would seem to lend support to the theories that some cases of autism have environmental causations:

New Gene Mutations Linked to Autism
By Erik Stokstad
ScienceNOW Daily News
16 March 2007

Autism has been a frustrating puzzle for geneticists. Searching for genes involved in the disorder, they have focused mainly on the 10% of cases that seem to be inherited. Now a group has made progress toward figuring out what goes wrong in the other 90%, the so-called sporadic cases.

Led by Jonathan Sebat of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, the team looked at DNA from 264 families. Using a variety of techniques, the researchers scanned the genetic material for so-called copy number variants, in which relatively long stretches of DNA are lost or gained. Sebat and colleagues found these defects in about 1% of the 196 people without autism they tested. The rate was 10-fold higher among 112 sporadic cases (people who were the only ones in their families with autism). In contrast, copy number variants turned up in just 2% of 47 families with multiple cases of apparently inherited autism, the team reports today in Science. When the researchers further tested the families with a single case, they found that the parents did not have the mutation, suggesting that the mutations were not inherited but had arisen spontaneously in mom's egg or dad's sperm.

Sebat estimates that at least 15% of cases of autism and closely related disorders are due to these kinds of mutations. And he expects that fraction to rise considerably when the team continues the research on more families and with more sensitive DNA probes--work that will also help pin down the genes involved. "Increasing our resolution and sample size is going to give us a better idea of where the major players are," he says.

In the meantime, the finding could be useful for parents with an autistic child who worry that the disorder is inherited in their family and that future children will also be autistic. "If a [spontaneous] deletion is identified, the recurrence risk seems greatly reduced," says Linda Brzustowicz of Rutgers University in New Jersey.

Edited to add: Thanks to gentle reader Ros, Ph.D., I have paroused a copy of the report. It looks like good research to me, and, as I said previously, raises questions about what might cause spontaneous deletions. I wonder whether hospital genetics departments will obtain the imaging technology to conduct these tests when a child is diagnosed with autism so that parents can make informed decisions on how to proceed with future procreation. Probably not.

On a personal note, we went in for genetic counseling after our first son was diagnosed but before the second son was diagnosed. The doc told us that we had a 5% chance of our second child having autism (he does) and a 10-12% chance of any third child having the disorder. I joked afterwards that "genetic counseling" is a euphamism for "get yourself fixed," which is what I did shortly after our second autism diagnosis. It seemed like it would be irresponsible and unfair to create another life knowing in advance there was a very good chance that the child would be born with a potentially lifelong, severe disability.

Family gathering?

Apoligies to gentle reader Bill, but this is what I feared would happen last weekend at our Utah gathering:



I love DW's family and all (and my own family-of-origin collectively is batshit crazy), but I was on my guard to keep DW from getting sucked--or jumping--into any controversies that might have arisen. Fortunately, none did, so I had myself a "whew!" glass of Cutthroat Ale at the hotel bar last Saturday night, where I was busted by two brothers-in-law in search of late night chicken wings. Oops.

Sadly, "Rome" comes to an end tonight:



I've always loved historical fiction, and "Rome" has done that on a grand scale--so grand that TPTB had to pull the plug on it. It's probably for the best--the BBC's "I, Claudius" covers the post-Augustus period. As I mentioned in an earlier post, there are many what-ifs during the period covered in the show, but I suppose the biggest what-if of all is the question how western civilization would have been different but for the ultimate triumph of the boy wonder and his establishment of the Roman Empire. Rome obviously had a powerful cultural influence on the nations that later formed in the imperial territories, and the commercial/trading system that developed undoubtedly facilitated the spread of a certain tiny religious sect from Palestine into the West, despite fierce persecution early on from the Romans themselves.

Edited to add--the final episode was okay, but one thing messed it up for me. How the hell did Pullo get the dying Vorenus all the way from Egypt to Rome in that little cart before Vorenus, you know, bled to death? That was utterly ridiculous. I loved the way they handled the Antony & Cleopatra suicides. IIRC, they killed themselves about 12 days apart, and Cleopatra did negotiate with Octavian until she realized that he intended to have her dragged through the streets of Rome like a bag of potatoes. I loved Maecenas's snarky line to Octavian after Cleopatra's suicide: "you have that effect on people." Hee!

Weekend blues

Damn, I got hit by the depression stick this morning, and I'm still feeling the effects. At the grocery store a few minutes ago, my limbs felt like they were made of cast iron, and it was mildly painful to move around. That's a sure sign that what I've been feeling in my head all day isn't just fatigue. I suppose I was due for a good thwacking. Nevertheless, I've felt much better the past few months overall, though those damn middle-age issues keep popping up . . .

Zodiac, or, The Truth--is it really worth it?

Have you ever been so obsessed with discovering the capital-t Truth that you can't leave it alone, no matter what the consequences may be? Then, just as you think you've finally discovered the Truth, it a) gets away from you; b) is too scary to take on directly; or c) really wasn't worth the damage cased by the process of getting to it. Moreover, as the New Yorker's David Denby pointed out, the real end of an obsession is the obsession itself, and not the end it is ostensibly aiming to achieve. Those themes and subthemes set David Fincher's "Zodiac" apart from other procedural crime dramas, and brought up questions about some of my own, personal quests for the proverbial holy grail.

There is shockingly little actual violence in "Zodiac," seeing as how it's a movie about a notorious serial killer, the Zodiac, who terrorized the San Francisco Bay area in the late 1960s and early 1970s. But I didn't miss the bloodied, mangled corpses. The drama in the movie occurs mostly inside the SFPD and the SF Chronicle newspaper, and, to a lesser extent, police departments in outlying areas. But the real drama occurs inside the heads of Chronicle cartoonist Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal), SFPD Detective Dave Toschi (Mark Ruffalo), and, to a lesser extent, Chronicle reporter Paul Avery (Robert Downey, Jr.). Graysmith wouldn't let the unsolved case die after the police departements moved onto other things, and he wrote the two books on which the movie is based. The case is officially unsolved, though Graysmith put together a pretty strong circumstantial case against a particular guy who died in 1992. The SFPD deactivated its Zodiac investigation in 2004, so it looks as though we'll never really know for sure.

That's the factual account. Gyllenhaal is brilliant with the psychological material. His Graysmith character moves from a groupie, trying to worm his way into discussions of the letters that arrived at the newspaper offices, to a throroughly obsessed madman, with boxes of files in his house and charts hanging on the wall. His wife (played by the fabulous Chloe Sevigny of "Big Love") left him over his obsession, after he endangered his family by announcing his plan to write a book in the newspaper and on television, and after he got his children involved in Zodiac-related activities. He comes off more as a geeky, obsessed, self-absorbed nut than as a dedicated crusader for truth. Mark Ruffalo is a little more low-key as the kind of "I hate to admit it, but I'm almost as obsessed as he is" Detective Toschi. Ruffalo's performance was understated, I suppose so that Gyllenhaal's charater's nuttiness would stand out. However, Robert Downey, Jr., is still a scene-stealer, and he steals his scenes in this movie, as the flambuoyant, alcoholic reporter who wrote most of the early Zodiac stories.

This is a very good movie, and I wouldn't be surprised to see a few Oscar nominations coming out of it.

Conspiracy Theorist

Now the Mayor appears to be blaming a racist conspiracy for the slow pace of New Orleans' recovery.

The slow pace of New Orleans' post-Katrina recovery is part of a plan to change the city's racial makeup, Mayor Ray Nagin told a national newspaper publishers' group last week.
. . . .
"Ladies and gentlemen, what happened in New Orleans could happen anywhere," Nagin told the association. "They are studying this model of natural disasters, dispersing the community and changing the electoral process in that community."

Read the rest here.

The Times-Pic's columnists aren't buying Nagin's latest bizarre comments. They seem to think that ineptitude on the state and local levels has much to do with the sluggish recovery. Check those columnists out here and here.

Utah Wedding Epic

My recent trip out west had a vaguely Eastern flavor to it, beginning over Provo, Utah, when I noticed the members of the family across the aisle craning their necks to view the campus of BYU from the air. I placed my hands in gassho and bowed to Happy Valley in a little salute. DW thought it was mildly funny, so the gassho/bow thing was a little joke of mine the whole trip; it's not something I do regularly, as there's a certain pretentious quality about using the zen gesture of respect in public these days, and, to quote Fawlty Towers, "pretentious? moi?" Anyhow, it seemed like it might be fun to write about gentle reader Bill's wedding to his amazingly gracious K. as a travelogue in the style of Matsuo Basho's "Narrow Road to the Interior," mixing narrative and poetry. Actually, I was bored on the flight home and decided to try my hand at haiku once again--and Basho I ain't.

DW and I arrived in Utah on Thursday and had dinner with gentle reader Jeremy.

asian flavor--yum!
good conversation; nothing
more clever to say

Friday afternoon, we made our way to the reception, which was held the night before the wedding.

reversed order? just
how radical dothey get
at this country club?

Saturday afternoon saw the big event itself. DW and I made our way from the hotel to Temple Square, evidently as the ceremony was getting underway. I am thoroughly unqualified to enter the temple itself, so we missed the sealing ceremony. It was fun walking around the grounds, watching the necessarily organized chaos of Saturday weddings at the Salt Lake Temple. I also noticed, for the first time, that Temple Square has some pretty funky landscaping. Evidently, one of my MIL's distant relatives was a landscape architect there way back when, and he made a point of importing interesting plants that could thrive in Utah.

cold stone edifice
golden angel watching o'er--
playing on the grass

Everywhere we looked, there were wedding parties, having pictures taken or waiting to have pictures taken. Speaking from personal experience, I can safely say that the bride and groom have more than pictures on their minds.

soon-to-be lovers
every staircase, photographs
anticipation

DW was appalled at what she saw as lowered dress standards for Mormon weddings. There was a gal in a very off-white dress that would have been verboten back when we were wed. Hilariously, there was a group of 20-something women seated outside the Temple, ample cleavage on display. One bystander broke out laughing when I blurted out, "well, it's certainly a more liberal Mormon Church than I remember!"

different wedding
different staircase, not ours
bridesmaids showing boobs

my wife, scandalized
told me to look; no, really!
implants on parade

Alas, no photographs.

After pictures, I hauled DW and one of her sisters-in-law to WalMart to purchase the fixings for a goody basket for the happy couple. We made it back to downtown Salt Lake just in time for the wedding dinner, inside the LDS Church's Joesph Smith Memorial Building. After the dinner, we took a stroll around the Main Street Plaza, which was controversial a few years ago because of some very bad lawyering on the part of the City and the Church. The legal issue was resolved, but the controversy brought up the long-standing tension between the Church and non-Mormon interests in Utah. I posed on the edge of a fountain.

We enjoyed our trip and, again, Puddle of Nothing extends congratulations to gentle reader Bill.

Identity crisis

This quiz about how I speak contradicts the last one I took. Perhaps not--there are quite a few Southern phrases in my speech (e.g., I used to say "I'm fixin' to . . ." deliberately, but "y'all" just slips out), whether or not I have much of an accent:

Your Linguistic Profile:

45% General American English

30% Dixie

15% Yankee

5% Upper Midwestern

0% Midwestern

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

Indulgent parenting?

I had to wonder this past weekend whether I've been overly indulgent with my kids over the years. A. and T. both threw tantrums when things didn't go just as they wanted, and I always wonder how much of that is autism and how much is just bad juvenile behavior. I can understand how T. was pissed off that his Alexandria routine was changed due to our exigent circumstances--kids with autism tend to be very rigid about their routines--but his explosion inside Target about not buying french fries before going to the store struck me as just plain bad behavior. We always go to the store first. But it could be that he was angry that it was the Alexandria Target and not the Slidell one, where he now likes to shop for swimsuits for trips to the beach. Again, that would be bad behavior, not necessarily autistic behavior. It's always hard to tell.

I can't say that there aren't parenting manuals for people in my situation; there are some pretty good behavioral psychology texts out there. However, I pretty much decided to put those aside for a while after a brief, painful, terribly failed attempt to get applied behavior analysis (ABA) underway with T. I pushed for help with the formal educational programming from the school system and the state disabilities system, with mixed results. The schools took a while, but they finally got on the same page with us, and our kids had a couple of good years at school. However, as to an in-home behavior program, the state people managed to piss on everything we had going on with our kids, even the things that were working. I had to restrain myself from overturning a conference table at our last meeting with those people, but I digress.

My instincts told me that T. and A. needed a parent/friend who would accept them unconditionally more than they needed a parent/behavior trainer who was determined to change everything about them. My reading, and my observations of my kids' interactions with other children, made it clear that they would have a very hard time forming friendships with their peers, so I made it part of my job to become their peer and to interact with them on their own level. I'm no flower-power, be your kids' best friend kinda guy, but it just seemed obvious that I needed to do that. I tried my hand at mild ABA techniques over the years, but never at the intensity that is recommended for success, as I pushed for systematic help with that kind of programming, which they are finally getting at St. Mary's, albeit in limited doses. My hope was that I could build a strong enough friendship bond with my children that could be used to pull them along developmentally.

I suppose that part of my instinct was a projection from my own childhood. It's a cliche that you model your parenting on you own parents, but I was determined not to do that. My dad never hid his disappointment in me for not being his idea of what a boy should be; I was, and I remain, determined that my children will never feel as though they are disappointments to me. Also, even before we had kids, I resolved that any kids of mine would be encouraged to develop their own individual personalities and interests, and that my function was to help them along the way. There would be no value judgments based on preconceived notions of what boys or girls should be. After the kids were diagnosed with developmental disabilities, I resolved that I would give them exposure to as many activities and experiences as possible, and that I would do whatever I could to help them enjoy their preferred activities, even if that meant jumping for joy at the sight of water pouring through the storm drain down the street. There have been many public tantrums, but, fortunately, most of the people around here are kindhearted and quick to size up the situation. It amazed me how people offered help when things were really, really bad, with the notable exception of a certain local congregation.

We've been told that our kids are unusually aware of each other and of us. They now play with each other on a regular basis, after several years of T. deliberately ignoring A. I hope that my conscious efforts had something to do with all of that.

However, friendship/parenting has its obvious drawbacks, the most obvious being an inherently mixed message about whether you are a playmate or a disciplinarian. It is damn difficult to be both. Additionally, in my role as friend/playmate, I have tended to take my kids wherever they want to go and to buy them way too much junk at the store. I've also overlooked more bad behavior than I probably should--behavior that sometimes has nothing to do with autism. Part of that was necessary to keep an always volatile, unpredictable home situation from exploding. I don't care what the strict behaviorists say, two kids with autism means that the kids get away with away with more than you'd like them to. That's just life.

Now that I can view some of this with a bit of perspective, I'm left wondering how to integrate something of a disciplinarian piece into the equation. I'm naturally very tolerant and indulgent with children to begin with, so it's not something that comes easy to me. I've been working on it, mostly with T., as he nears the horrors of puberty, so we'll see how it goes.

Poetry Thursday

About a week ago, I decided to try out Poetry Thursday, something I noticed on gentle reader Sideon's blog. This week's assignment was based on the color red, something I had a few disjointed ideas on, but, alas, wasn't able to put together. Also, I was a little depressed on Thursday, so writing about an un-depressed color like red didn't seem right.

We have A. at home this weekend. He woke us up at 2:00 a.m. today, which is very unusual for him. A few years ago, however, sleepless nights were routine for him, and your humble correspondent generally was "it."

One of the gentle readers of this space is getting married on March 17. This is one of the very finest people I know, so congratulations are in order. Your humble correspondent will be on-hand for most of the festivities. One problem--anybody who has ever seen my tie collection would know that all of them are hilariously inappropriate for the requested dress for photos at this event. If Craig the Filosopher is reading, he can vouch for me here. I wear really loud ties to compensate for my introverted personality--and because I happen to like them. I came home from Target last night with a tie that I thought might do, but DW questioned that. It's a funny problem to have, actually--a lawyer who cannot dress conservatively to save his life.

New blog subtitles?

Some friends--including some of the gentle readers of this space--directed your humble correspondent's attention to this fun title generator. I don't know which one to use as the subtitle for this blog:

1. The Objectification of Deviance and the Oral in Randy's Puddle of Nothing
2. Corpses as Objectification: Savaging Alien Autobiography in Randy's Puddle of Nothing
3. Poetics and Madwomen in Puddle of Nothing: Randy Deflowering Lesbian Violence
4. The Testicular Reclaiming The Bourgeois: Randy, Puddle of Nothing and Capital
5. The Outrage of Semiotics and the Bourgeois in Randy's Puddle of Nothing

Accent quiz, second time around

Last time I took this quiz, it said I sounded like someone from North Jersey. I told that to a friend who lives there, and he just laughed. This quiz will figure me out one of these days.

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Inland North   You may think you speak "Standard English straight out of the dictionary" but when you step away from the Great Lakes you get asked annoying questions like "Are you from Wisconsin?" or "Are you from Chicago?" Chances are you call carbonated drinks "pop."
The Midland
The Northeast
Philadelphia
The South
The West
Boston
North Central
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

Disappearing Louisiana

The New Orleans Times-Picayune has a scary series of articles this week about the rapid loss of wetlands in south Louisiana. According to the wetlands experts interviewed for the articles, it is possible to reverse the devastation of the past 75 years, but it will take time. If nothing is done, the open Gulf of Mexico will be right up against the levees on the southern end of the New Orleans metro area by the year 2020.

BTW, nobody mentions global warming as having anything to do with this problem. I thought I'd mention that in light of the announcement at the Oscars about how Hurricane Katrina brought home the need to do something about global warming. Not that global warming isn't problematic in its own right; it just has nothing to do with our vulnerability to storms.

King of Creepy

For my fellow "Rome" watchers--my oh my, what an icy, creepy reptile Octavian has become. Ewww! But the highlight of last night's episode had to be Servilia's spectacular public suicide outside of Atia's house, and Antony's "now THAT is an exit!" immediately thereafter was the line of the evening. There was some good dark humor in the ep., and Antony usually gets the best lines, even if he will end up dead at the end of the series.

Crummy Title; Good Movie

We saw the espionage drama "Breach" the other night, about FBI analyst Robert Hanssen, who spied for the Russians for 15 years or so of his 25-year FBI career. Hanssen led what must have been a tightly compartmentalized life--he was a fanatical Catholic, a mild sexual deviant, a counterintelligence wizard, and a traitor to his country. Those pieces don't fit together in any coherent fashion or form, and the movie makes no effort to explain the jarring incongruities in the man's life. In the end, it doesn't give any simple explanation as to why he took up spying for the former godless commies he denounced from his position as a devotee of the Opus Dei brand of Catholicism. DW said that there was a very simple explanation--he did it because he could. I suppose that's as good a reason as any, and, in real life, are there really simple explanations for many of our own inconsistencies and hypocricies?

Chris Cooper is awesome as the creepy Hanssen, and he plays all aspects of the character very convincingly. Ryan Phillippe is good as Eric O'Neill, the aspiring FBI analyst who was planted in Hanssen's make-work office; he was told that he was put there as part of an investigation into Hanssen's sexual deviancy. Only later was he told that his boss was suspected of treason. Laura Linney was kind of wasted as the head of the Hanssen investigation unit; a shame, as she is a good actress.

The Family Values Emperor

Entertainment Weekly's snarky blurb for the upcoming episode:

Great White North

Last night, I dreamed that New Orleans had been wiped out by another major hurricane and that the federal court where I work had moved to Toronto, lock, stock, and barrel. Houston evidently was damaged also, so that city was unable to provide the extraordinary hospitality it gave us in the wake of Katrina. My coworkers and I were giddy about living in this cool, cosmopolitan town, so much so that we wanted to put a Canadian flag on our building and sing "O, Canada" in the morning. My former boss was in charge of the office once again, and he strenuously objected to having any symbols of Canada displayed; only the American flag could be flown.

When I woke up, I thought, "hey, if this office has to move to Canada, then more than just New Orleans got messed up!" Moreover, I see the American flag as symbolizing my own, personal ideal of America, so I like seeing it wave. Maybe I'm just missing me my Calgarian Gentle Reader Doug, and I had this dream about moving to Canada so I could post about it and get him to leave a comment. Anyhow, this is the second post-Katrina dream I've had about the city being destroyed and us moving.

Going from here to there

Gentle Reader Jer poses the question on self-definition on his blog; I've wrestled with various aspects of that question for years. Anyhow, I suppose that, to a large extent, our self-identifcation has to do with working from where we are, with all of our conditioning and circumstances taken into account:

Wrapped, surrounded by ten thousand
mountains,
cut off, no place to go . . .

Until you're here, there's no way to get here.
Once you're here, there's no way to go.

"On the Road to T'ien-t'ai," Yuan Mei (1716-1798)

World Movie

I watched "Babel" this morning, and, I must say, I found myself a little "meh" about the film. It's a good movie, but not a great one. The acting is excellent, and it is nice to see some of the best talent in other countries on the American screen. The idea of interconnected storylines in very different parts of the world is appealing, but it's damn hard to pull off convincingly, unless it's a James Bond movie, and those aren't exactly written to show the interconnectedness of all sentient beings. In "Babel," the point is that suffering and hope are universal phenomena. I found myself a little icked out by the Japanese girl looking for love in all the wrong places, and pretty unsympathetic to the undocumented alien nanny in California who took the kids to Mexico--after learning that their mother had been shot in Africa, if I got the timeline of the film right. Also, the link between the Japanese and African storylines was just a bit too tenuous for me.

If I a vote, I would probably pick "Little Miss Sunshine" as best motion picture of the year, with "The Departed" a very close second. As much as I love violent Scorsese films, LMS is fresh, quirky, and authentic. Interestingly, DW agrees with me on that. We frequently don't see eye to eye on our entertainment choices, and I didn't think she would like LMS. I haven't seen "The Queen" or "Letters from Iwo Jima," so I can't comment on them.

Brrr! at the Beach

Your humble host can be talked into doing some pretty silly things, like taking a kid to the beach when it's 58 degrees out, after several days of temperatures getting down into the low 30s. However, T. ran straight to the swimsuits, shouting "beach!" when we walked into Target earlier today, so I knew right then that I had to be firm about saying "whatever" and braving the cold water. The Mississippi Sound at low tide is basically a wading pool anyway.

Like my new hair?

My new skill

T's obsession with the Plush Bus toy hook/crane machine in the WalMart foyer has forced me to acquire a new skill. I run the machines at his direction. I probably spent at least $50 acquiring the toys seen in this photo. However, I had never, ever won a prize from one of these machines before last night. I feel like Buster from "Arrested Development." Woo-hoo!

Mardi Gras 2007

Oh yeah, Mardi Gras is next Tuesday. Enjoy the video, unless, of course, you're using a Microsoft browser (what has Google/YouTube done to piss off Microsoft?). My 60-something retired superivor marches in this parade.

Edited to add: Here is the Krewe du Vieux's newsletter. It's loaded with snark and satire directed at the political establishment, national, state, and local.

Winning isn't everything; it's the only thing.

I saw the appalling reality-show trainwreck "Showbiz Moms and Dads" on A&E a year or two ago, so when I heard that there was a movie out involving a young girls' beauty pageant, I thought I would take a pass on it. This past Tuesday, I went to WalMart, eagerly anticipating the purchase of "The Departed" on DVD. However, I had my dates wrong, and "The Departed" isn't out until this coming Tuesday. I had seen that "Little Miss Sunshine" had won a few awards, and I actually got around to reading a very brief review of it, so I figured, "what the hell?" and picked it up.

The Hoover family in "Little Miss Sunshine" may be the quirkiest movie family since "What's Eating Gilbert Grape?" came out in the early 1990s. Unlike "Gilbert Grape," however, this movie doesn't hit so close to my own life as to make it difficult to watch. "Little Miss Sunshine" is a commentary on the obsession we have with being winners. I was expecting a light, fluffy comedy, but that's not what I got. It's slightly dark, actually, with the members of the family failing at one thing or another as the movie rolls along. The beauty pageant at the end, however, is fabulously funny. The quirk factor of this movie is high, and I can see why it got an Oscar nomination for best picture.

Unanswered prayers

"More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones."
--St. Teresa of Avila

As some of my gentle readers are aware, LDS Church Public Affairs Director Michael Otterson has a blog on the Washington Post website. I actually think this is a good thing, though he tends to be very general and noncontroversial in his comments. This week, Brother Otterson wrote about the lessons he has gleaned from his regular practice of prayer. One of his lessons in particular caught my eye:

That prayer may never be more meaningful than when the life or health of our own child is in the balance.

Your humble host commented:

All due respect, what would you say to a father who prayed frequently, sincerely, and desperately, begging his Heavenly Father for improvement in his chldrens' health, received nothing at all by way of an answer, and saw the situation continuing to deteriorate around him? Shouldn't that father have received something--anything--in response to his frequently tearful, sometimes angry entreaties? I felt like I was banging my head against a brick wall by offering unanswered prayers, and that pain went away only when I gave up on that practice.

Sadly, this was how I felt a few years ago, as I sought a solace that I never received. My family situation was a disaster--two children with severe developmental disabilities, a deeply depressed spouse, and no support system to speak of. I, too, was diagnosed with depression. Up until this time, I had prayed mostly out of habit, but when the crap hit the fan, I spent hours on my knees. Alas, nothing came of it. Eventually, I began finding a measure of relief in a meditation practice that allowed the pain, fear, anger, and sadness to float around inside my mind, and that somehow made me feel connected to everybody and everything else in the cosmos. I know that others achieve something like this through traditional prayers, and, in theory, I think that it is life-affirming to be able to communicate intimately and familiarly with an omniscient God, and I'm happy for those who accomplish that, but it just didn't work for me. OTOH, perhaps St. Teresa was right about answered prayers and unanswered prayers. As the maxim says, be careful about what you ask for, because you might just get it. But I don't know how having my kids' conditions healed--or at least my own white-hot pain lessened--could ever be considered a bad thing.

Boundary Pushing

A. was home over the weekend, and I found him pushing the boundaries of physical safety on some of our usual outings. This is new, and it scared me a little. It began when we were playing a little chase game at a local park. A portion of the park runs alongside a bayou. There's a boat-launch leading directly into the water; on one side there runs a sidewalk with a railing, while the other side has no railing due to the hitches for boats to tie up and load/unload. A. and I were about to run around the boat launch to the un-railed side. I was anticipating my safety procedure for that side of the park, placing myself between A. and the bayou and keeping us both a safe distance from the edge. Suddenly, A. darted down the launch and into the cold water. I tossed my jacket off and started after him, when he turned around and walked out. He was amused by my surprise. Later, we went to the other local park, where A. spotted a couple of gaps in the fences separating the play area from an interstate highway. He had no chance to get through those gaps, as I spotted them also and blocked the way. One of those gaps was atop an embankment that local kids slide down on pieces of cardboard. A. likes sliding like that, though I have to bend over and pull him down. I suppose it makes him feel cool, like a teenager. Anyhow, whenever we got to the top, he would lean over the guardrail, as if he wanted me to lift him over it and onto the roadway. I wouldn't do that, of course, and I wouldn't walk him down the roadway any further than the end of the guardrail.

We've always been conscious of physical safety issues, something that is a matter of particular concern to the parents of children with autism. Many autistic kids have no fear of danger, and A. falls into that category. Also, most children--whether or not they have autism--tend to push against the boundaries that we parents impose on them. A. also shows the potential of becoming a kind of "adreneline junkie" thrill-seeker, not something most parents relish. This is the first time I've really noticed one of my kids deliberately pushing the boundaries of his own physical safety. I suppose we'll have to work at setting up appropriate times and places for certain activities, like running, that inherently have some potential for danger, and more strictly enforce the limitations we already impose.

Simultaneous with this is the difficult task of training T. in age-appropriate behavior as he nears puberty. His mental functioning may be at the level of a 3-year-old overall, but his hormones and his body are those of a 10-year-old. A couple of the issues we're working on have dredged up some unpleasant, anxiety-provoking experiences from my own early childhood that I had forgotten about. I've been told this is a fairly common phenomenon for parents.

Childrens' Television Tourette's?

Two happy Teletubbies
sitting in the Sun--
one pulled a knife;
the other, a gun.

I blurted this out around 5 a.m. today, while watching a video with my son, A, as my alternative version of a cute little poem. Over the years, I've developed something akin to the sudden verbal outbursts popularly associated with Tourette's Syndrome. I suppose that's a way we grown-ups make our kids' shows bearable, though I think childrens' television generally is much better than it was when I was a kid.

Yesterday, DW and I showed an old Disney video to A. We just looked at each other, laughing hard as we recalled my alternative version from years ago of the following song, which, on the video, features Donald Duck parading a group of kids through Disneyland. I didn't sing it, and neither of us had to say a word. My alternative version changed only one word; anybody who spent his or her childhood in LDS Sunday School and Primary should get it pretty quickly. DW still thinks it blasphemous:

We're following the leader, the leader, the leader
We're following the leader wherever he may go
We won't be home till morning, till morning
We won't be home till morning
Because he told us so

Tee dum, tee dee
A teedle ee do tee day
We're out for fun
And this is the game we play:
Come on, join in
And sing your troubles away
With a teedle ee dum
A teedle do tee day

We're following the leader, the leader, the leader
We're following the leader wherever he may go
We won't be home till morning, till morning
We won't be home till morning
Because he told us so

DW and I had dinner tonight with an old law school buddy of mine who I hadn't seen since graduation. He and his fiancee took a cruise from New Orleans last week and got back today. We went out with the two of them on our way back from dropping A. back at school. It's always nice to reconnect with old friends, and those New York accents are wonderful to hear.

Crimson dreamin'

I was in a dumpy local bar (the beloved Flora-Bama comes to mind--what a fun place!) with some people I knew, though I can't remember whom. I needed to take a whiz, so I looked up and saw the sign with one arrow directing the men in one direction and the other arrow directing the women in the other direction. I went behind the "mens" door, and saw another sign, giving me a choice of options, one of which was the local chapter of the Harvard Club. It was a pretty large area, with several rooms and lots of waiters and other service personnel. Yet it remained the same dumpy old bar. I took a seat in one of the rooms, which had people seated at tables arranged in a semicircle. A couple of mid-20ish guys stood up and told bad jokes that I can't remember. I remember thinking that I attended LSU, so what am I doing hanging around in here? I still needed to pee, so I stood up and started off in search of the head. Someone asked whether I would be back, and I said something about needing to pee right now.

I have nothing against Harvard or any other college. Also, to my knowledge, there is no local Harvard Club, and, somehow, I doubt it would look like the Flora-Bama if there were one.

The rebuilding is complete!

For those of you who don't live here, a most reliable source has declared that the rebuilding of New Orleans has been completed.

Under the Sea

Last night, I dreamed that I was watching a middle-aged woman and her 20-something son, standing atop an invisible bridge that appeared to span a part of the ocean. The water was very clear. The son had a rod and reel--I couldn't tell whether it was designed for fly-fishing or bait-fishing--and the woman gave her son a choice between catching a worthless species of fish or catching a type of fruit that held the secrets to life, the universe, and everything. There were fish and fruit floating in the seemingly fast-moving water. She was frustrated and annoyed when he chose to pursue the fish, so she pointed out the fruit to me. I dove into the water after the fruit, and suddenly found myself deep in the water, underneath killer whales, baleen whales, dolphins, and other acquatic life. I realized that I needed to surface soon, or I would run out of air and die. I swam up and up, but couldn't seem to get to the top. As I neared the surface, I grabbed ahold of a creature that looked something like a puffer-fish that could somehow be used to save my life if I surfaced unconscious and with no air in my lungs. At that point, I actually woke up. Damn, if it wasn't 2:00 a.m., and a piece of my CPAP mask broke in two when I tried to get back to sleep.

Autism Conference

We attended the second annual St. Mary's Autism Conference in Alexandria, LA, this week, and spent some quality time with A and T. The conference was organized into small "break-out" sessions this year, and those sessions were more practical and less theoretical than last year. However, I spent most of last year's conference working the parents' group table, so I didn't see all that much of it. I got some hope renewed this year, seeing the miraculous results achieved by a couple of intensive autism programs with which some of the presenters were affiliated. We also received some affirmation that some of the things we've been doing intuitively actually have scientific support. It's astonishing how far applied behavioral psychology has come; it's infuriating how difficult it is for parents to afford the best of these programs. Fortunately for us, St. Mary's is moving in the right direction with its programming, but the autism center there is still in its infancy.

Meta-blogging note--Blogger finally allowed me to switch to the new version, so I can label and organize my posts. Yay!

The Saints

We watched yesterday's NFC and AFC championship games, and were a little bummed to see our Saints defeated. However, the Saints' offense is based on timing and rhythm, and, thanks to the Bears' defense and the crummy weather, neither timing nor rhythm really got going. Also, Drew Brees didn't seem to get back in sync after he got called for intentional grounding in the end zone, resulting in a safety and two points for the Bears. The Saints' defense played remarkably well in the first half, given the amount of time it was on the field. Next year looks good for the team if it avoids injuries.

The AFC championship game was likely the real Super Bowl, with the winner of that game emerging as the favorite to win the whole enchilada. I was a little surprised at the Patriots' aggressive play-calling early in the game, but it worked well, to the tune of a 21-6 halftime lead. The Colts showed toughness and determination in the second half, and this year they finally got themselves a trip to the Super Bowl. It was a great game to watch.

Musical Scrubs

Hee! Everything comes down to poo.

Rome revisited

I've watched the first season of HBO's "Rome" on DVD over the past couple of weeks, and the first epsiode of the second season. I'm appreciating it much more the second time around, and I enjoyed it to begin with. The production has reimagined ancient Rome as something like modern Mexico City or Calcutta--a colorful cacophany of confusion where everybody lives on top of each other. Also, the show never forgets that Rome was a society built on violent conquest and that the economy was based largely on slavery. Even Caesar's most trusted advisor was a slave. There are storylines involving the familiar military and political struggles involving Caesar, Antony, Pompey, etc.; storylines involving the women who were sort of shadow rulers while their husbands were off at war (the characters played by Lindsay Duncan and Polly Walker have a wickedly fabulous rivalry); and storylines involving common soliders and their families' day-to-day lives. "Rome" is decadent, violent, and grand. Check it out.

Hollywood South

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie reportedly have purchased a house in the lower French Quarter, have enrolled their oldest child in school, and plan to make this their primary residence. Angelina has been sighted mingling with the hoi polloi in the Quarter, and no doubt my coworker who lives in the Quarter will soon report a sigthing. I told him that if he sees them, he must invite them to the next office king cake party. I'm sure one of our 10 a.m. office shindigs would outshine any of those Hollywood bacchanalias. The Pitt/Jolie move actually makes sense--Brad is making a movie here, and he has taken an interest in rebuilding the Holy Cross neighborhood in an environmentally friendly fashion.

Devastation and frustration

Three photos of Waveland, Mississippi, near the Gulf. About a half mile or mile of the town was flattened by Katrina's storm surge. A railroad berm evidently served as a breakwater, and the part of town north of the berm wasn't damaged quite as badly as the part on the water.

Birthday and the Beach

T. turned 10 years old last weekend.




It was 75 and sunny on Sunday, so I took him to his very favorite place in the world, the beach! However, DW had hid his swimsuit too well before Christmas, when it was too cold for waterplay, so I took T. out in search of one. Academy Sports had no swim suits of any kind, and T. was hitting and kicking me over the fact that we were there instead of at Target, at the other end of that strip mall. I was griping out loud about how dare they hold themselves out as a sporting goods store, etc., when they don't even have something so basic as a swimsuit. Having a kid with you is fabulous when you need to vent about a store like that. Or about people who write checks in the express line instead of using debit cards. Or people who wait until its time to pay to root through their purses or wallets to find their cards or checkbooks. Grrrr! Anyhow, Target had a boatload of swimsuits, and we were picking one out when DW called to say that she had found T's swimsuit at home. To avoid a tantrum, I went ahead and purchased one at Target. Problem is, now he knows where they keep the swimsuits, and a swimsuit is a communication object for the beach, even though he can say "beach." So we went to Waveland, Miss., and had some fun in the water.

Anniversary

Today is my 13th wedding anniversary. We celebrated it a day early. DW and I probably are more in love than we were when we got married. Like most couples, we've had our ups and downs and we've helped each other through some very hard times. We still miscommunicate on occasion, but who doesn't? Working on communication has been one of the most important components of our relationship--DW and I have different forms of communication, and getting each other's modes down took time. Oddly, perhaps, another extremely important component for us as a couple is to give each other whatever emotional and mental space we need to work out our own issues. Anyhow, I can't believe I ever looked like this:

Scary City

We are looking ahead to Sunday's playoff game against the Eagles around here. The Saints have had a surprisingly good season, and, man, has that been good for morale. Things in the suburban areas like my town are moving towards normality--at least we feel safe and comfortable. Things aren't nearly so rosy in the city itself. The crime rate is surging again, and TPTB are struggling with the problem. Many of the streets remain unlit after dark, and, as an article in today's newspaper points out, even routine encounters can invoke fear:

City is in a dark and scary place now

Tuesday, January 09, 2007
Jarvis DeBerry

My gas gauge was completely on E, and the nearest gas station was the Chevron on the corner of Canal Street and Broad Avenue. It was late. No, it wasn't really late; just dark. Approaching 7:30 p.m. on an increasingly foggy Saturday night in a city that had seen more murders than days in the new year, and I pull into a gas station alone.

Nobody's there. Not even a cashier behind bullet-proof glass. And for the first time in -- well, ever -- I step out of my car worried that someone in New Orleans will hurt me.

Read the rest of the article here.

Update--The mayor announced a multifaceted approach to the current crime wave late yesterday. I lived in Uptown N.O. during a couple of crime waves in the 1990s. There was one carjacking epidemic that got to the point where you simply did a quick stop-and-go at red lights between 10 p.m. and dawn. The crime problem isn't new, but it takes on a new urgency as TPTB try to make the city attractive to businesses and residents who left after the storm.

Resolutions, goals, plans, or whatever

I haven't written down my New Year's resolutions in several years, and I rarely actually achieve them anyway (stuff happens, you know), but I thought I'd put some down for 2007. So here are a few things I'd like to achieve this year:

1. Improve my physical health. My physical health has suffered in the past several years, as I've been preoccupied with issues that were, quite frankly, more important. I've made a good start on my cardiovascular system already. The proverbial elephant in the living room wrt my health is obesity, so I'd like to take off at least 40 pounds in 2007. I lost 15 or so in 2006, so there's hope. Also, I need to work on my upper body, likely via pilates/yoga and weight training.

2. Improve my mental health. I have made substantial progress in this area over the past three years, but anxiety and depression occasionally rear their heads. Like many men my age, I've worked through some midlife crisis issues the past few years. That's in large part due to my dream life, in which my subconscious mind has asserted itself very loudly after many years of denial, repression, and suppression. Fortunately, I've worked through things thus far without embarassing myself by pretending to be 25 again (though I seem to be just about that age in a certain category of dreams). I have come to terms with several aspects of myself that I used to view negatively; I suppose that's a good thing.

The sadness, anxiety, and uncertainty about A. and T. and their futures is something that will always be with me. That's simple reality. Also, I've yet to come to terms emotionally with my family of origin's rejection of me. I think I'm still to angry about that situation to feel sadness about it yet. Moreover, there's the fact that I live here, which is something that I don't think can be overlooked. My family was not affected directly by Katrina, but there's a certain amount of stress and anxiety that's seemingly in the air.

The main tools I plan to use for my mental health are robust physical exercise and meditation. I'll still use my prescribed medication and speak with my therapist, who has been very helpful. However, I'd like to think I'm taking more control of my own destiny, so to speak.

3. Be more kind and compassionate to other people. I can be a cold bastard on occasion--a trait that can come in handy in my profession--but I need to be mindful of that fact. I can say that my tolerance of others has improved tremendously as I've dealt with my boys' autism and my own internal issues. I have no idea what makes people tick, so, apart from people who step across boundaries that simply should not be crossed, I'm fairly good at not being judgmental.

4. Continue to love my immediate family and circle of friends. Just reminding myself here.

4. Continue to be cautions with family finances. Again, just reminding myself.

5. Be a better employee. I could stand to be better organized and less distracted on the job.

6. Enjoy life a little more. I've been so preoccupied with my family's health and well-being the past few years that I've ignored doing things that I personally find fun. There may be some scuba trips and kayaking runs in 2007, I don't know.

Well, these are just a few things. I'm sure there are many more things I could work on.

I love a parade