Playgrounds

We went and saw old friends for a small picnic at Stanley Park. Cold cuts, muffins, cookies, the awkward pause as you try and ascertain whether you're doing the 'brought enough for everyone let's all share' or the 'brought just enough for me and my own, thank-you-very-much' type of picnic.

It was slightly chilly, enough to warrant a wind-breaker, and strong enough that any attempt to cover up one's pudge with baggy garments was sure to be thwarted. Stupid low pressure systems.

We had Molly, a baby and a toddler, and they a little one (1 ish). There were also two playgrounds and a beach to explore. When one has small children, doubly so if one is visiting friends who also has small children, you don't so much 'visit' as you tag team trying to supervise them, all the while attempting some form of small-talk and catch up. I might have exchanged all of 10 words with my old college buddy that was not related to immediate childcare.

It's an experience going to a play ground with a toddler. It becomes this communal parenting situation as you watch other parent's styles, how uptight they are, or lax. Eventually some sort of acceptable average is followed: somewhere between 'put them in a safety bubble of high impact styrofoam' and 'hand them a loaded 9mm with the safety off and trust their judgement'.

It becomes this constant evaluation of risk/reward. Do we risk them breaking an arm to reward them with a little bit of confidence? If they are too shy, do we push them into some 'acceptable' level of risk taking, with the possibility that we topple them into 'heart-explodingly recklessness'? If they are fearless, do we warn them to slow down, again with the possibility that we might make them the sort of overly-cautious person who becomes a 3rd level library clerk for life in charge of the Typing Pool's social committee of which they are the only member?

Luckily I subscribed more to the nature than to the nurture side of child rearing. Barring a really tragic upbringing I'm not going to scar and damage Owlet for life. Hopefully. My rule of thumb is, if the possible injury won't break skin or break a bone, go for it. This, I think, is reasonable. We have friends who subscribe to the 'if the spinal damage isnt' permanent, let er rip' school, and I'm sure we have friends (who would never admit it) who subscribe to the 'injuries only happen to wards of the state' school.

But a public playground is an interesting normalizing influence. Subconsciously or not, parents try to toe the average level of care/freedom. There are those that don't, myopic folks who invariably are getting their visiting rights for the week and haven't the foggiest clue how much they can or cannot let their child do. And there are the 'rugged individualist' parents, almost always dads, who let their 2 year old run full speed through the Striking Zone of the big kid's swings.

Sure, it ends up being slightly dangerous for the poor children, but it's great for the parents, who get to feel like they're doing a good job, and at least gave me something to say to my college buddy other than, 'Oh Christ, are you gonna go get her or should I?'.

Shots

I have a deathly phobia of needles. Not pointwork or gramophones, but the kind you jab into your arm or thigh. This among other things -- lack of work ethic, not enough free time, self-body image not as damaged as need be-- have kept me from professional body building. Zoroastra help me if I ever get adult-onset diabetes. I tend to get the shakes and start to squirm like The Dude in The Big Lebowski when a ferret was thrown into his bubble-bath.

I recall having my wisdom teeth extracted under general anesthetic. The oral surgeon walked in, all freshly tanned from his likely month-long vacation in some place tropical, expensive, and littered with Sands resorts (it's a sobering thought that the cultures of umpteen number of Melanesian and Micronesian nations are kept afloat by overfed Americans, heat-stroked stupefied and blazing sunburnt, watching disinterestedly to a thousand year old dance while devouring some endangered tropical fish that tastes 'just like chicken').

He had the sort of professional ease and casual boredom that comes from folks who do one or two things repetitively, for vast sums of money. Obviously someone who'd seen quite a few extracted wisdom teeth.

So they get the needles ready, and I start to shake, only a bit, I thought. But at some point the surgeon says, with not negligible amount of alarm in his voice 'easy, easy'. There's a current of panic there, like he just remembered he left his tazer in his six-figure sports sedan (complete with a set of keys attached to a logo keychain that'd make Flavor Flav do a double take). It's then that I realized that my phobia of needles was, er, exceptional?

Several months ago I went to get flu shots with the family.

That is, all in a small examining room, all taking shots.

It's a burden for those of us less self-possessed; for those of us more harried and continuously aware of our shortcomings, that children, specifically, your children, learn by what you do, not by what you say. Many of your actions, likely the ones you least like, will manifest themselves in your brood. I mean, many will not too, and there will be innumerable things that they do that come from the ether, or from their genes, or from Elmo.

But you have to control for the things you bestow them. Fear of needles, terror of doctors, or the innoble memory of their father losing his shit were not things I wanted to bestow to them. Not if I could help it, which, let's face it, I wasn't sure that I could.

So I dug deep, as the sports cliche goes, clenched the jaw, went into the fray. I volunteered to be first, bared the arm, and looked straight ahead. I took the shots. They didn't seem to hurt as much, inner turmoil and the looming spectre of parent failure, I assume, dulls the pain.

So I'd like to say that my fear of needles has been overcome. But it'd be far more accurate to say that my fear of needles can be sufficiently repressed given enough pressure.

The Interior Dialogue of My Children & Dog

Owl Jr.
Upon seeing the door open to the laundry room, a room which he is STRICTLY barred from. Stops whatever he's doing in the family room, rushes over, totters inside.
"Oh hey, what sort of parties are going on here."

Upon seeing the dog food and water lowered.
"Although I've been told not to splash in the water and play with the dog food multiple times, the ban has surely been lifted."


Molly (the dog)
Upon seeing her food lowered.
"I've been famished for HOURS, what sort of wonderment do we have here for my gastronomical pleasure, a small fillet of sole, perhaps? A rare porterhouse? Perhaps a... Oh. Oh.. Uh. Did you know you have dog food in there?"
Slowly turns around and walks away.

Greeting you after you've left for more than 30 seconds.
"Sweet mercy how I've MISSED you, Where have you been, what trials and tribulations have kept you away!? Life isn'' worth THINKING about without you around.
After about 20 seconds of that.
"Oh god, you're STILL here?"


Owlet
When watching TV.
"There is no other entity on the planet but you oh TV, tell me your bidding."

Aquarium

I had the day off, so I went to the aquarium with Owlet.

The aquarium -- like any large institution that happens to have a death-grip on some of your fonder childhood memories -- skirts around very serious issues and manages to be viewed, by different people and at different times, to be something between Dachau and a historical site commemorating a local battle and the signing of an important document (that, among other things, ensures that the making moonshine whiskey with Idaho potatoes between the hours of 3am and 7pm for people of non-Irish descent to be completely illegal and subject to fine of four cents or the family's 3 largest hens).

In this case the issue is animal captivity. Particularly animals a bit higher on the evolutionary tree (I've yet to see a protest over the forced imprisonment of a small, relatively unsightly pelagic mollusc). Vertebrate, good, mammal, even better. I'm not one to argue against that, however; in an ideal world we wouldn't have Flipper inside a tank of water barely large enough to pass as an underfunded public pool. I mean, I saw Star Trek IV, for crying out loud.

I tend to be on the other side of the debate, though, and not only because I have small children and trying to find activities that one of you don't find brain stabbingly boring is between nil and whatever the probability is that Boss Hogg will get the Duke boys. It's simply, or so I tell myself, that those indelible memories of youth, that seemingly universal attachment to wildlife that pervades Western culture and I'm sure is responsible for 99% of all conservation efforts, is tempered and cast in titanium when a child visits a zoo/wildlife sanctuary/aquarium.

They are evil, in their own way, but the good they do. I'm not sure you're going to get that with anything else, I don't care how high-def your edition of Planet Earth is.

So we went there and we saw frogs, sharks, tortoises, the largest freshwater fish in the world, otters, belugas, dolphins.... and well, with a 3-year-old, that goes by pretty fast. They aren't there for the spiel or to even read the invariably sparse plaque. They go, are amazed, wonder-struck, bored, then fidget. All in the span of about 5 seconds. They are the fruit flies of novelty.

Owlet also asked questions, nothing mind-blowing, I think one of them had me answering, 'the other one died', which she took in stride. Toddlers, or the ones I've met, seem to take the whole death thing in stride pretty well, I'm not sure when the horror and panic sets in about it. Most of questions she asked were mundane or nonsensical or something she answered herself with logic that defied examination or physics.

But it wasn't her questions that really stuck in my mind that day. We were watching the belugas, and a hosh posh overly-fit mother of some adorable children were making a day of it, it seemed, with snacks and a picnic blanket. One of the kids said something, and the mother replied, 'You shouldn't be asking that question, some questions just shouldn't be asked.'. And I thought, that's either the making of a bow-tie wearing, Invisible Hand worshipping, GOP stalwart or the hippiest scientist bum ever.

Used Bookstore

I love used-bookstores, because I'm a cheap bastard, and supporting authors directly makes me feel all queasy and capitalistic inside; but moreso because they often only carry the 'good stuff' (particularly if in a densely populated area).

It's a bit humbling, of course, when one can't find a single book on their 'to-read' list, it's either the books you want are so sought after that nobody ever sells them; or when they do, they are snatched up; OR, a big OR here, your literary tastes sucks. Which, well, granted, I can't disagree with.

There's that great atmosphere of intellectual expansion in a used bookstore. They got your over-degreed Liberal Arts staff, and over the murmur of some progressive punk band from the 80's you can hear terms like 'Proustian', 'proto-liberal idealization of free-will' and other such heady thoughts that I've never gotten my brain around. But being awash in a limbo of grad students and intellectuals (both pseudo and real) one can figure out where one might stand in the continuum of 'thinkers'. Apparently I fall somewhere between 'guy who has really deep thoughts while getting high in the 7-11 parking lot' and 'Uncle Fred getting kinda poetic and deep about 'Nam right before he gets outrageously racist'.

I know this. I don't want other people to know this, though.

So what if I don't have skinny jeans or know the difference between Hemingway and e.e. cummings (one was a doctor, one was macho as hell, I think) or refer to headphones as 'cans' or have a list of preferences, that, if you were to have any of them, would signal an immediate and irrevocable shunning. I don't wear a blazer with a hoodie and I still suspect Modest Mouse to be a lesser known hero in early Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle comics.

I mean, I'm not that person. But I also have no desire for the general used bookstore population to think it, or, barring that, for them to write me off as some sort of staid, ramrod straight Tom Clancy-idolizing Military Budget-supporting far-right kinda person.

It was with some trepidation that I went to the front counter to get some help. I have, as my previous post can attest, gotten into Patrick O'Brian. So I asked the beardy, ironical t-shirt wearing assistant manager-esque fellow behind the cash register if they might have some. There was a slight pause, as he realized he might be dealing with One of Those Readers (this being a sub-race of readers who read things Slightly Untoward or Crassly Commercial), then he said, 'Oh, you mean those, naval books?'. He waved vaguely around the corner. Naval as in 'military', as in crufty, as in. Well.

I tried to maintain my composure, although the idea to blurt out, "I don't know art, but I know what I like, and that ain't it" while motioning towards his rack of Sandman, did cross my mind. I quietly collected a few O'Brians; then remembered I had some books I wanted to sell. Without thinking I emptied the 10 or so books I no longer wanted. Another staff member, a shorter youngish lady with 'simmering post-doc' written all over her face quickly went through them. In what can only be calculated to lessen the pain of intellectual ostracization, she said, 'These are still yours", pushing 9 books back.

Which is a shame, because I was kinda thinking I'd about keeping the Eggers book.

Dude, Brad's Back In Town and He's Getting the Guys Together! Some Things You Might Need

• an ostrich feather, a small gibbon with a subdued gag reflex, fifty-two dollars in quarters.
• Portuguese bleach, fishing tackle, Moose.
• an Esperanto handbook , cinnamon, all outstanding warrants cleared.
• a recently cleaned gasoline tank, left-handed brass knuckles, an unusually large avocado.
• gift card for Big N' Tall, two blenders (one hand, one standing), an empty stomach.
• a zip cord from a WWII era paratrooper, a sony walkman (cassette) with a cheetah print velour cover, two bucks.
• a strong magnet, a switchblade comb, Diana (who used to be Kent).
• the libretto to Euridice, an incontinent Macy's clerk, a new car battery.
• Vaseline, the soundtrack to Quicksilver, a passable grasp of market Hungarian

Book Review : Patrick O'Brian

If you are red-blooded male of a certain stripe, the sort that likes Band of Brothers and Braveheart in which violence is visited upon bad guys and good guys form the sort of blood-brother connection that we office drones perpetually attempt to re-enact with company wilderness survival courses, whitewater rafting, or an open bar at the Christmas Party; where men of unusual heart and charisma lead other men to their peril, maiming, or worse; if you are, in short, 99% of all men, then I'm sure you've seen Master and Commander : The Far Side Of The World.

It's the story of a small British man-of-war around the early 1800's that has to pursue a much larger brig around South America, guns blazing, storms a-wrecking, men a-maiming. Terror and danger from the enemy, from nature, the tight lashing together of men who must or die. It, like so many of its ilk, hits some raw, primordial nerves, at least in me. Mastodons and hunters and all that.

So that movie, is actually an amalgamation of two books (of twenty) about Captain Aubrey and Dr. Maturin and their many adventures during the Nelsonic era of naval warfare. They are by Patrick O'Brian, an Englishman who lived in France and who had a predilection for reading source material from the National Maritime Museum for his inspiration. He was also a former intelligence agent and the biographer of Picasso. One of those writers of an entirely different age.

Much has been written about O'Brian, hailed as one of the greatest novelists, let alone historical novelists, of all time. I won't waste pixels going on about that, but about how something so utterly foreign, English 19th century naval dominance can hold any interest to me. I've never been terribly interested in history, or sailing (beyond a puttering a small Lazer around a lake), or the densely archaic language of medicine and biology during the Leeches are A Good Idea WHAT and So What's All This About Evolution Then era.

And yet I am drawn in. But O'Brian doesn't make it easy. He writes very much in that period, one gets the feeling you are reading a Jane Austen book without all the women and marriage business. It's the bit of Austen's novels that chronicles the dashing Lieutenant before he settles down and is pursued by, or pursues sharp-minded ladies buffeted by social pressures, mores, and their own individuality. The bit with the guns and the swords.

Everyone speaks as I imagine they would, not much is explained, not in the way of terms or very strange grammar. It's a bit like a good science fiction book where terms are thrown about, and either you figure it out from context or flounder in the effort. I get the feeling the O'Brian was so well versed that he just mentions things in passing. Thankfully when sea-going technicalities are of the most importance to the plot, O'Brian will expound.

There are quite a few phrases that are endearing in their candour, although through perpetual usage they likely mean no more than a 'sure' and 'whatever' in that time. But to the ears of any modern reader, they have their charm, phrases such as 'never in life', 'with all my heart', 'above all things', 'upon my honour' have pleasant, bare sense to them. Welcome in a modern time of sarcasm and indirection and faux-hip-wink-and-a-nod-kitschy-but-cool, sorta.

It also helps that Dr. Maturin, while also being the ship's surgeon and a naturalist, is also a spy for the British government. He's an idealist and cunning and vastly intelligent. There's ruses and counter-ruses, planting false information and discovering double agents.

Aubrey is jolly and a genius of a sea-men, if a bit dull in other respects. A man of action, of appetite and brimming with all those qualities that sum up a leader. He struggles to climb the ranks of the Navy, and meets fortune, both good and outrageous.

They are tremendous friends, who are so unlike they almost define each other in contrast. Their bound is music, another topic about which O'Brian shows a well-educated mind.

In both the intelligence work and in the direct action of whatever brig Aubrey happens to be in, there is a certain understability to it. That is, if you were to talk of ships today, there'd be AWACs and tomahawk missiles and it would very soon degrade into an appreciation of technology. In the Aubrey-Maturin book, things are so primitive that it's relatively simple to understand things straight away. When Maturin is found out to be a spy in one place, of course he will not be found out in another place because news takes a fair bit of time to travel. A ship that fires guns by being propelled by gunpowder is not far removed from bows and arrows. The differences and the contours that make the battles and intelligence intrigues engaging are human differences that can be grasped instantly.

So many things depend on the better qualities and baser in people. Greed and avarice, shame and pride.

It's a thumping good time, and I've been completely pulled into it. They are all good, but you can't go wrong with starting from the beginning, Master and Commander. I give the series ten broadsides out of ten.