Bus stop bow hunter

In my latest adventures with the parents who bring their kids to the bus stop I have spoken about hunting and guns with neighbor dude. The state-at-home dad from around the corner who does not appear to cook and clean as I do is apparently a bow hunter. This means he sits quietly in trees and kills deer at close range. In season, he tells me, he also hunts with muzzleloaders. He is a traditionalist, something an idealist when it comes to hunting in the old ways. But later in the week he seemed to be pouring it on a little thick when he claimed to have killed moles with a shotgun. Not only does this seem far-fetched, but can you imagine waiting to see a mole come tunneling along? I don't doubt that a shotgun would do the job, but who sits out on their lawn all day cradling a shotgun? It's like pruning with a sword.

Apparently, it's also common to take the little ones out on their first hunting trips with shotguns. I assume that they carry shotguns because it's less likely that they'll miss. But shotguns, especially if you intend to kill a deer, don't have much range. You'd have to be awfully close, perhaps within bow and arrow range. But then the wound from a shotgun would be big and messy.

All of this makes me feel tremendously naive.  If he asks me if I've ever hunted I'm going to tell him that I grew up as something like a Quaker, which isn't far from the truth.  If I had stayed in the faith, I would have been given non-combatant status if I ever found myself in the military.  

Patricide

BB was rehearsing his knowledge of Stars Wars the other night. He gets this knowledge in dribs and drabs from other kids and from us, because he's never seen any of the movies. As he described to himself how Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader it dawned on him that the fight between Luke and Darth was a fight between father and son. You could see the irony spreading across his face in a big smile. I felt sort of queasy when I saw that smile.

Job search moodiness

On the play list. An Elliot Smith cover.

Big smile

Meeting BB at the bus yesterday was also a 5-year-old friend, here for a play date.  To BB's mind, it was probably like being met at the airport.  He bounded off with a huge smile and gave his friend a big hug.  The old lady next door, mowing another 1/4 inch off her lawn, was so taken with the scene that she switched off the mower and sat down to talk to the boys.  She obviously hasn't had much experience with little kids recently, but she was charmed by their disarming nature.  Somehow their conversation turned to video games, and BB told her about watching a friend's brother play a game in which you could get KILLED.  He said it with relish, but it's clearly stuck in his mind, this watching a friend's brother.   The play date went great.  The older they get the easier it all becomes.  They slam the door and huddle in BB's room and, I think, ah, now I can get work done.

P.S.  Yesterday was Blog Action Day.  I'm not much of a blogger (I won't be donating my day's blogging income), but I certainly support its goals.  Like everything else, the big problem in this world is that those who love power would rather try to stop time than adapt to a different world.  It's funny, though -- our electricity has been going out all the time recently.  The common wisdom in the neighborhood is that it's squirrels shorting things out.  The squirrels are busy at this time of year.  But we've probably saved more in our hour-long power outages than turning lights off for a year.  In any case, drive less, turn off the lights, and recycle!

Grindhouse

I watched parts of Grindhouse over the weekend, the fauxsploitation double feature by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez. I absolutely hated Rodriguez's contribution, Planet Terror, and only got about 15 minutes into it. Melting flesh zombie action is not my thing. Tarantino's Death Proof is equally silly but more realistic and enjoyable. Tarantino exploits a gearhead convention found in such 1970s movies as The Duel and Vanishing Point.  These are movies I saw in my impressionable years.  There's still something about Detroit muscle battling it out on the road that stirs my pulse. Death Proof also exploits a gender revenge theme, ala Thelma & Louise. Two gearhead stunt women eventually take down the pervert-murderer ("Stuntman Mike") Kurt Russell, one of whom straddles the door sill with a long metal pipe as they charge after him, joust-style. In between there were long takes of table conversation, which is something of a signature for Tarantino.  Unfortunately, the copies of the movies that I have don't contain the fake trailers that were part of the U.S. theatrical release. I couldn't make it through Kill Bill (too much gore), but I still appreciate Tarantino's serious homage to genre films.

Making beds

If anyone wants to get me a joke present for the holidays, this is the one: Dad's Own Housekeeping Book: 137 Bright Ideas. Why such an asymmetrical number--137? Did they run out of ideas at 137? I especially like the line in the book jacket copy that dad can make a bed "in one minute." Yes, over the years, I truly have learned to make a bed in one minute, maybe even less. But, but, do I have a real guy's voice?

"Written by a real guy, in a real guy’s voice and with a direct guy-to-guy point of view, DAD’S OWN HOUSEKEEPING BOOK—in the spirit of Dad’s Own Cookbook, with 270,000 copies in print—takes even the most Swiffer-challenged dad and shows him that housekeeping is no different from yard work, that if you can organize your shop you can organize a kitchen, and if you can load a trunk you can load a dishwasher. From laundry room to attic storage, from the “Five- Minute Attack Plan: Bathroom” to the all-out assault of spring cleaning (it really does make a big difference), from mold to stains to picking-up-after-the-kids-without-driving-yourself-crazy, this is the comprehensive crash course. Here’s how to do the laundry without dulling colors. Stock the pantry to make weekday meals infinitely easier. How to get mildew off the shower tiles. How to make a bed—in one minute. How to be best friends with baking soda—just one of the many tips the author gives for saving money. And what you can do in thirty minutes to make your house completely presentable for your mother-in-law."

Actually, my bright idea was to find discussions of dads who make beds - check Google, I couldn't find much. I know, perhaps too trivial. But type in mom making beds, or something like it, and you will get loads of hits.

Darth Vader

BB was going to be an astronaut for Halloween. The new obsession with space is a good one. He has stargazing books, solar system books, and even some space exploration books. His birthday party had a NASA theme. The NASA material has an appealing squeaky clean image. Well-educated types who still have the right stuff without the swagger. But when he and his mom came home from the costume store yesterday he had a Darth Vader costume. I know it was cheaper than the astronaut helmet, but dressing up in a Darth Vader costume at six years old is like dressing up as Satan. It's like our good, optimistic astronaut really has gone to the darkside. I'll admit, though, that he looks very impressive as Darth.

The real irony is that he won't watch the actual Star Wars movie with me. I adored the movie as a kid and became a sci fi fan thereafter. (It was a real life lesson when the sequels turned out to be so disappointing.) Even yesterday, when he had a half day off from school, I said, let's go to a movie. NOOOO! No, movies. The whole idea of a loud, dark theatre just gives BB the willies. Fair enough and probably a good thing, but I hope I get him to go with me before he's a teenager. In any case, it's much better to his way of thinking to inhabit Darth Vader without the confusions and frights of seeing him on the big screen.


I always enjoy this freshmen comp-like analysis of the racial implications of Star Wars in the film Chasing Amy.

Update: It looks like the video got pulled from YouTube.  Here's a pic of BB's costume.

Friday robot blogging

Thinking by cell phone

I came across this observation on Jodi Dean's I, Cite blog:

"Cell phones create a sense of immediacy and urgency that has an interesting flattening and amplifying affect. All matters are worth phoning about--immediately. So, there is little time to forget about what is such a big deal, to see it in context, to allow one's immediate feelings to dissipate."

At first I thought, yeah, she's right. I'm wondering, though, if we can't see these supposedly mindless, immediate feelings as thoughts and judgments in their own right. These immediate feelings ARE the context, rather than some higher order of thought that can assess the feelings. When one calls a significant other from the airport and says nothing more than I've just landed or we're just boarding, the statements occur in the context of an ongoing relationship. What they could mean (or think) is that I miss you already or I'm feeling insecure at the moment. And how are these immediate statements over the cell phone any different than the banalities that fill the days of people living together? Cell phones change the experience of emotion and maybe even the emotion itself (which is interesting), but I think she does a disservice to denigrate immediate feelings. I can't help thinking that she must be a bit of a Hegelian.

Cell phones aren't the problem. I think she has another fear. Say, a scholar had only 100 minutes a month on a cell phone to think, 100 minutes simply to do her work as a scholar - over a cell phone. Sometimes technology feels this way. Cell phones don't end deliberative thinking (and feeling), but if we only had cell phones to do that kind of thinking we'd be doomed.

Going to the doctor

Don't let anyone tell you different. If you work full time, expect to take the full extent of sick time simply caring for your kids. Over the weekend it was a fever, with the potential for keeping a kid home on Monday. Tuesday, it was a visit to the doctor for crusty eyes, an ordeal that takes about four hours out of one's day. Crusty eyes could mean an ear infection, an eye infection, it wasn't even clear to the doctor. The point is, from day to day, one is absent in one way or another from work. Whether it's coming in late, leaving early, or taking a chunk out of the day, work is always - really, always - disrupted by kids. It's worse of course now that we have two kids. I long, sometimes, for the day when our kids become latch-key types, finding their own way home from the bus and taking themselves to the doctor. Of course, then we'll be worried if they're having sex in the afternoon or smoking up in the backyard, but at least I'll be ignorantly at work.