20 March 2004• by

Self-Definition

In which I wonder what makes us who we are: Are we defined by the work we do? By the hobbies we keep? By our personalities?

How does one define oneself?

Does Jeremy define himself as a car salesman? When Mac thinks of himself, does he think of himself as a teacher? Does Pam think of herself as a doctor? Dave as a lawyer? Jenn as a mother? Craig as an architect?

Do we define ourselves only by what it is we do to make money?

I’m reading the Hitler book again. I need to have it finished for book group on Sunday, but I keep getting sidetracked by thought experiments.

For example, the author — Ron Rosenbaum — goes to great lengths to try to define Hitler, as if defining him would somehow explain what he did. Was Hitler a mountebank? Or was he utterly sincere in his evil? Was he natural or was he unnatural? Was he human or was he something else? Rosenbaum’s attempts to define Hitler made me wonder: how do I define myself?

We went over to Jeremy and Jennifer’s for dinner the other night. At some point, I said something (which I can no longer remember) that made Kris smile at my thought process. In my defense I said, “But I’m a writer.” As if that explained why I thought as I did. And that’s the first time I can recall actually defining myself as a writer.

Later, thinking about it, I realized that I do think of myself as a writer now. I’m not a boxmaker or a computer programmer or anything else.

I am a writer.

But what does that mean?

And what, then, is Dana? What is Andrew? What is Tammy? What is Joel?

Is dowingba a dishwasher? Or is he a musician?

Are we defined by the work we do? By the hobbies we keep? By our personalities? What is it that makes up the one-word (or few-word) definition of our lives?

How does one define oneself?

Comments


On 19 March 2004 (11:27 PM),
dowingba said:

I think it’s how we think of ourselves. I don’t think of myself as “a dishwasher”. I totally think of myself as “a musician” though, even though I make no money doing it. I don’t think of myself as “a writer”, even though I write almost every day, and have even produced a novel before.

It might be more clear cut for me than for you, though. I mean, I’m obsessed with music. There is nothing I like more than music. Not even close.



On 20 March 2004 (08:29 AM),
Dana said:

As you might imagine, I’ve thought a lot about this, too.

I’ll tell you how I define myself. I’m a person — a person who does various things, like programs computers, sees movies, plays RPGs, and stuff like that.

I define myself as a female person, even though my tackle currently says differently, and my chromosomes will always say differently.

Words like ‘writer’, ‘musician’, and ‘dishwasher’ are descriptions of activities that are undertaken by people. Saying ‘I’m a writer’ is saying ‘I’m a person who writes’. The ‘person’ is always there as an unstated assumption.

And I think it’s important to define oneself in terms of what one is as a person — what we think, feel, and believe — as opposed to what one does as a person — writing, playing music, washing dishes.

The activites are important, but the qualities are more important, I think.



On 20 March 2004 (09:45 AM),
Tammy said:

Defining oneself as a person is not defining oneself. To define oneself as a female or male person is not defining oneself. Nature defined that at birth.

In my opinion, (I insert that for Dana’s benefit)I think we define ourselves by our passions. Jd, I have had similar experiences where I have said something off the wall and everybody looks at me like I’m from Mars. My only explanation for my strange train of thought is because I’m a writer. I’ve had to explain that to people many times before. Writers think differently than others. They view the world differently. I had to explain this to my neighbor lady just yesterday and now I can’t remember what I said! But she gave me a funny look. I answered the same as you did, “I’m a writer.”

Unlike you, JD, I have thought of myself as a writer for years. Having my first story published at ten years old in a Sunday School paper has forever marked me as a writer, in my own little mind. I had a school teacher in the 4rth and fifth grade who saw great potential in me and really thought I would grow to publish a book someday. I saw that teacher again several years ago for the first time since 1969. One of the first things she asked me was if I had written any books yet. She had not forgotten.

I love to garden and bake but I don’t define myself by those things. I define myself first as a mother than as a writer. Hmmm, I mever really define myself as a wife. Not sure why that is. Maybe I need to look into that.



On 20 March 2004 (12:33 PM),
Van said:

A difficult question. The amazing thing is sometimes how little we even know about ourselves. I remember on the wall of my 2nd grade classroom was a poster defining the essential question of personal identity:
“you are what you eat”

Although that lacks dazzling philosophical significance and could not appear on a doctoral thesis, it has a wonderful simple truth to it that transcends time. My answer then is:

“I am a Quizno’s sandwich” (Chicken Carbonara on Rosemary Parmesan Bread, to be more precise).



On 20 March 2004 (01:28 PM),
Dana said:

Tammy: Defining oneself as a person is not defining oneself.

But it is, Tammy.

When someone says they are a writer, a wife, or a mother, you are ‘subdividing’ the larger category of people. You are saying that you are a person that fits categories X, Y, and Z. But in the case you (and JD) are discussing, X, Y, and Z are all activities.

I prefer to define myself as a Person who has a set of Qualities — I believe X, I think Y, I feel Z — instead of a set of activities.

It’s just a different way to categorize things. I find it more useful.

I know lots of computer programmers. But they’re all very different from one another. So saying ‘I’m a programmer’ isn’t a very useful subdivision for me. Likewise, I know several people who define themselves as scientists, or writers. Again, lots of differences between them.

But I find a lot of similarity between all the kind people I know. So I find it more useful to talk about a person falling into the ‘Kind’ category than into the ‘Writing’ category.

Shrug.

This is just me, of course. Since I find those categories helpful, it’s how I also define myself.

I’m a person. I read a lot. I (think) I’m humble and diplomatic. I’m fairly technical. I try to be fair minded — I believe in fair mindedness and equality. I believe in kindness, compassion, and empathy. I think logic and science are useful and fun. I have a droll sense of humor.

I think those kinds of categories are more useful than ‘I’m a writer’. I’d rather know why you or JD write than know that you do.



On 20 March 2004 (01:51 PM),
Tammy said:

I’m a person is ridiculous. If you weren’t a person there would be nothing to define. There’s no point in mentioning it. No one ever doubts that some one is a person. How can that define you. The only way it defines is to seperate you from a plant or an animal.

And to say your humble? How do I say this as nicely as I can? Let’s just say that I don’t see humility as being a strong point of yours. In fact, I see it just the opposite. Have you ever heard the saying that when you start talking about how humble you are that it’s a sure sign you’re not? Now Dana, I like you and all and I know I’m always clashing with you but I just want to say that I mean no offense by what I just said. Kudos to all.



On 20 March 2004 (02:50 PM),
Dana said:

No one ever doubts that some one is a person.

I think we take it for granted, and I think it’s useful to acknowledge that, fundamentally, we’re all the same. All of us.

And to say your humble? How do I say this as nicely as I can? Let’s just say that I don’t see humility as being a strong point of yours. In fact, I see it just the opposite.

Well, to be fair, I said I think I’m humble. Not the same thing.

Am I humble? I don’t really know. I suppose a better way to put it is that I value and aspire to humility.

I am not a great person. I’m not sure I’m a particularly good or even ‘average’ person. I’m certainly not any better than anybody else I know.

I haven’t done anything significant, and I doubt I ever will. My impact on the grand scheme of things is likely to be minimal if not completely inconsequential. My skills and abilities are eclipsed by many other people’s. I’m not uniquely good at anything, nor even particularly expert. Frankly, I consider that I’ve failed at every thing of any consequence that I’ve ever tried. What success I’ve had I largely attribute to luck and the help of others.

The thing I’m most proud of in life is having helped a friend out of debt and depression.

I try to be as good as possible to my friends, and I try to be kind to people I don’t know, too. I try to stand up for principles that I believe in, and understand the principles of others that disagree with me. I try not to judge others harshly, and I try to treat them with respect and kindness whatever I feel towards them or their beliefs.

Am I humble? Probably not, but I try. Am I a miserable excuse for a human being? I certainly hope not, but it’s also entirely possible.



On 20 March 2004 (03:47 PM),
Tammy said:

Well I wasn’t trying to imply that you were a miserable excuse of a human being. Goodness no. And thats one thing about having kids; a persons impact goes on and on long after death, in fact it goes on till the end of time.



On 21 March 2004 (10:25 AM),
jenefer said:

Perhaps Dana’s point is that she spends time thinking about her humanity and all that implies, before thinking about labels for her activities. I think Dana is a much more philosophical person than most of us, just as I feel about jd. I love reading this site and expanding my thought processes almost every day. Too bad I type so slowly and don’t have hours and hours for discourse.

Read More →

16 March 2004• by

3

In which this site turns three.

First, a bit of housekeeping:

  • For Saturday’s Chicken Noodle Fest, I made Texas sheetcake, a favorite family dessert. It was a disaster. I posted my story in the Ask Metafilter thread about favorite recipes. Kris, unaware that I’d already written this story, typed up her version, too, intending to goad me into posting it as a guest foldedspace entry. Instead, I created a weblog for her. You can find her story here. Kris protests that she doesn’t want a weblog of her own, but she wanted me to make sure you all read her story today. If you like her writing as much as I do, tell her so. Maybe she’ll write more!
  • The Foldedspace Fantasy Baseball League needs managers. We have seven owners, but I’d like at least three more. Our league is hosted by Yahoo!, uses a head-to-head format, and will implement an automatic draft (which will be held in a week or two). If you’re interested, please sign up. The league ID number is 165247, and the password is ichiro51. This is a low-pressure league.
  • I’ve made some changes around here in an effort to fight the growing nuisance of comment spam. The only noticeable change should be that on archived entries, you must hit preview before being allowed to post a comment. There’s a small chance that you may have a comment rejected by my comment filter. If this happens, let me know and I’ll fix it.

And now, on with the show�

On 16 March 2001 I stumbled upon a site called Blogger. I read a bit of the site’s propaganda, followed a few links, liked what I saw. Blogger was a tool to automate the process of maintaining a website. (Blogger is a content management system, though I didn’t know the phrase the time.)

I’d maintained a website since the fall of 1994, but had never been diligent about it. I posted occasional updates about my diet (1997, 1998), chess tournament reports, pictures of cats, and stories about our vacations, but that was it.

In 1998, after becoming addicted to the journals of Michael Rawdon and Karawynn Long, I tried to keep my own on-line journal. I enjoyed writing, but I hated having to manually code every page. My journal lasted only a few weeks.

Blogger, it seemed, would free me from this chore.

Three years ago today, this weblog was born. I had an audience of two: Kris and Dana. Mostly I wrote about random, geeky things. I didn’t have a focus. I told myself I was keeping a weblog to improve my writing skills, but I never really tried to improve my writing. I took days off at a time. After 9/11, I took off an entire month.

Eventually, it dawned on me that a weblog could be more than just a place for random thoughts. It really could be a place to practice writing. Hadn’t I always told myself I wanted to be a writer? Here was an opportunity to hone my skills. Through conversations with Mac and Pam, I realized that keeping a public journal was fraught with moral dilemmas. Still, I decided to become more serious about my weblog, to use it for extended entries, and especially for character sketches and writing fragments. I started by focusing on personal history.

On 22 January 2002, I moved from Blogger to Movable Type, and the current incarnation of Foldedspace was born.

For twenty-six months, I’ve been writing about my personal history, about my belief system, about my friends and family, about books (especially Proust) and movies and music I love, about my surgery, about clamdigging and clam chowder, and about all of my geeky pursuits. Through it all, I’ve attempted to relate the stories I encounter in daily life.

There have been times I’ve walked a fine line between what is and is not acceptable to write in a public forum; there have been times I’ve offended friends (most notably an instance in which I criticized Mac re: book group — sorry, Mackenzie!); there have been times I’ve struggled to find a voice. Sometimes I don’t feel like writing for days at a time. Sometimes I’m full to bursting, feel I could write a dozen consecutive entries, all new and exciting.

I’m glad to have this forum, and to have you here to share it. I know that sometimes — like today — I lapse into the tedious or the maudlin. I know that my entries are often filled with typos. I know I sometimes cross the line to ubergeekdom. I think it’s all worth it, though, for the days I’m able to actually write, to turn out something I’m proud of and that my audience enjoys reading, for the days we argue over whether everything here is true.

I guess all of this is to say: Thank You. It’s been a great three years keeping this weblog. I hope to keep it for three years more (or longer!).

This is the 674th entry in this weblog. There are 3651 comments.

The most popular entry here, both in terms of total comments and in terms of ongoing monthly visits, is my request for sexy songs. Two thousand people a month visit that entry, and it now has ~155 comments making 857 recommendations. The most recommended sexy song (ten suggestions) is Nine Inch Nails’ Closer (not sexy! not sexy! sheesh�). In second (with eight recommendations) is Paula Cole’s Feelin’ Love (very sexy).

There’s been an ongoing meta-discussion that helps define the composition of the Foldedspace community (such as it is). That discussion started (I think) with Dana’s coming out as transgendered (5/13/03). The discussion continued with Everything Here is True (9/8/03), Denied (2/8/04), and Amend This (2/25/04). These are the major threads in the discussion, though it continues from time-to-time in one-off comments here and there. (And in Tammy’s weblog.)

My own favorite entry is Independence Day, but that’s because it’s so intensely personal. (I’m also partial to my pseudo-philosophical musings.)

The numbers in the following table represent the average daily visits to the front page of the site. Visits are not the same as hits. One visit can create multiple hits if a person reloads a page.

2001   2002   2003   2004
Month V/D   Month V/D   Month V/D   Month V/D
            Jan 153   Jan 332
            Feb 160   Feb 457
Mar 1         Mar 190   Mar 507
Apr 1         Apr 219      
May 3         May 254      
            Jun 230      
            Jul 249      
      Aug 33   Aug 353      
      Sep 39   Sep 341      
      Oct 47   Oct 330      
      Nov 73   Nov 355      
      Dec 93   Dec 334      

I don’t know who all of you readers are. Many of my friends and family read this weblog, but so do many strangers. Don’t be a stranger! Introduce yourself — contribute to the discussion.

Comments


On 16 March 2004 (11:42 AM),
Amanda said:

Happy Bloggiversary!

Glad to see that our paths must have crossed somehow through Karawynn. I was just wondering the other day how I happened to stumble across your site.



On 16 March 2004 (02:28 PM),
Joel said:

Foldedspace: first on my Favorites tab, first in my heart.
I’ve started using the term “foldedspaceland” (as elegant and facile as it is) to signify my friends around here and their activities. Certain movies and books are definitely from foldedspaceland, as well as ideas, moods, and brands of wine.
The Chickennoodle Fest was a great opportunity to add a little meat to an otherwise ethereal community, I was able to put a face to a lot of my fellow posters. I sort of wish I’d made more of an effort in that regard, but, then again, that wasn’t ostensibly what the party was about.



On 16 March 2004 (10:31 PM),
dowingba said:

There’s meatspace; there’s cyberspace; and then there’s foldedspace. What more can I say?



On 19 March 2004 (08:37 AM),
Peter said:

Hi J.D.,

I’ve been reading your blog for a while, I think I got here from WWDN but I can’t remember. I love your writing style, keep it up. I’ll be contributing more often in the future…

BTW, I really like the design of your site and the way comments and the “On this day at foldedspace.org” links work. Cool.



On 19 March 2004 (09:11 AM),
LAS said:

Short time reader, first time commenter, I found your site just after the new year, when I was researching the infamous Cinnamon Bear. I had found a site that contained MP3s of the episodes (public domain, luckily), which I am going to burn for my family. I was looking for the name of the store in Portland that hosted a Cinnamon Bear for kids to visit. Three months later, I now look forward to my Saturday mornings, which include net-surfing and catching up with your goings-on. Thanks.

Read More →

14 March 2004• by

Host Hunt

In which I research web hosts in preparation to moving foldedspace.

I’ve been researching web hosts over the past several days, preparing to move foldedspace.org to one offering more space and a lower price.

What is a web host?

Foldedspace.org, and every other web site, resides on computer called a webserver. This webserver is connected to the internet at all times, allowing you faithful readers to have instant access to this site’s content.

While it’s possible for a person to host a web site on their own personal computers (a la Matt and his family of sites), there are many reasons to pay another company to do this for you.

I’ve been paying Omnis Hosting to host my web site. In the four years I’ve been with them, they’ve not altered their service packages an iota. When I signed up, it cost $17/month for 100mb of disk space, 10gb of transfer, and 25 e-mail addresses. It still costs $17 for 100mb of disk space 10gb of transfer and 25 e-mail addresses.

The foldedspace.org family of web sites has grown so that it occupies about 95mb of disk space (more if I forget to clean out the stats files, or if Denise uploads a bunch of cute pictures of Ryan and I don’t remember to reduce their size). Combined, we generate about 2gb of traffic every month. Omnis’ plan is no longer acceptable.

Take a look at what other companies offer:

Company $/mo Disk Transfer E-mail Subd.
Powweb $8 1gb 150gb 650 unl.
Citizen Hosting $8 500mb 20gb 300 ???
iPowerWeb $8 800mb 40gb 400 ???
Total Choice(a) $9 850mb 12gb unl. yes
Dreamhost(a) $10 500mb 25gb 75 15
Surpass Hosting(a) $10 2gb 30gb unl. ???
Surpass Hosting(b) $15 4gb 35gb unl. ???
Total Choice(b) $15 1gb 18gb unl. yes
Omnis Hosting $17 100mb 10gb 25 no
Dreamhost(b) $20 1.6gb 40gb 375 75

Omnis Hosting provides the weakest package of the bunch. Whenever I’ve contacted them about adding a la carte features (in other words, adding more disk space at some set fee, say $5/100mb), they’ve refused to do it. They say I need to upgrade to the next plan. Even their top plan, at $27/month, only offers 200mb of storage. A change is in order.

I’m currently leaning toward Powweb. For $8/mo, they offer quite a bit of disk space and unlimited subdomains. I also like their great help forums.

Here’s my plea to you: if you have a web site (in particular, a weblog), please share your experiences with your hosting service. Who are you with? What do they offer? How much does it cost? Are you happy with them? I’m trying to make an informed decision, and the more info I can gather, the better.

Comments


On 15 March 2004 (09:56 AM),
Lisa said:

Matt H. and I both use 1&1 hosting. They ran a potentially too good to be true deal last year (3 years free). I don’t have time to figure out what their deal is now, but they’ve been reliable so far.

www.1and1.com



On 15 March 2004 (11:02 AM),
Cat said:

I’ve been with Cornerhost for a few years now, and I’ve never had a better experience. Admittedly, the online tools are not fully developed, but it’s run by a real person who understand the needs of bloggers.

The plan list is here:

http://www.cornerhost.com/plans/

Good luck on your switch–it’s always a litte nerve-wracking.



On 15 March 2004 (12:22 PM),
Jared said:

My site is hosted off of the ISP that I work for so I get it for free. However I have seen that ReadySetConnect.comhas pretty good rates.



On 15 March 2004 (12:22 PM),
dowingba said:

Something about DreamHost that does not show up in your chart is that they offer unlimited MySQL databases, even on their cheapest (500mb) plan. That means you could use a different database for each of your “family” of weblogs, if you wanted (which would speed up the dynamic loading of comment scripts and would speed up posting entries and comments as well, and so forth).

Don’t use 1and1. I used them for a while because of their 3 years free offer (which isn’t offered anymore) and, quite frankly, they suck. They’re SQL databases (each user gets 1) are embedded in other databases and so on and so on to the point that it’s ridiculously slow and unreliable. Also they don’t offer phpMyAdmin or anything to manually edit database tables and the like, and scripts such as cgi and php don’t even work properly. Their new deals aren’t good value anyway, for what they offer.

Of all those hosts in your list I’ve used (and use currently,as you know) DreamHost, and they’ve been great so far (about a week). I’ve used 3 different webhosts in the past 6 months, and I think I can sniff out a crappy host now from a mile away.

Again, I will recommend you go look at the DreamHost support forums to find out just what kind of a company they are. I think you’ll be pleased at the honest way they run a business. They’ve been around since 1997, too, which gives added stability (they won’t just go out of business all of a sudden, for instance).

DreamHost has the most advanced control panel I’ve ever seen, also. Every option you could ever want is available. You can run PHP as CGI, edit databases, create database hosts, edit .htaccess permissions. I’m just very impressed. But I’ve only been with them a week or two so…



On 15 March 2004 (12:29 PM),
mac said:

I use Ipowerweb…But unfortunately, I don’t have any idea about if they’re good or not. I’ve never had any problems with them and they seem fairly cost effective.



On 15 March 2004 (12:43 PM),
dowingba said:

PS: I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Shared hosting is the equivelent of living in a dorm. It’s tolerable, but you’ve gotta get your own place if you want to ever be fully content.

Read More →

13 March 2004• by

My Husband, the Chef

In which describes the terrible ordeal of the Texas Sheetcake.

text by Kris, links by J.D.

Jd loves Texas Sheet Cake, a sort of cake-like brownie topped by a rich chocolate glaze. Very sweet, very chocolate-y with a hint of cinnamon. I think this is something his mother fixed when he was growing up. Chocolate sheet cake is on Jd’s menu for Chicken Noodle Fest so I look for his recipe as I make a shopping list.

It’s Friday, so Jd’s working till noon and I’m home. When I can’t locate the recipe, I email him. He responds: “Hm. It may be loose, on a piece of paper, just floating in my recipe bin, or the favorite recipes book, or somewhere. I may have to find it when I get home.” This is déjà vu; the last time he wanted to make this dessert, he couldn’t find his previous recipe, so he purposely got it from his Mom. I’m hoping he can find it, and, after he searches fruitlessly around for a while and is on the verge of giving up in favor of using an alternative cake-like brownie recipe, he actually does. He spied the word “Texas” on a corner, peeking out of a stack of loose papers in a pile on the bookshelf where his cookbooks used to be. He feels victorious. I silently wonder if there isn’t a more efficient system.

When I look at the recipe, I notice it calls for a 10″ by 15″ sheet pan. Although I have more baking gadgets than I could possibly need, I don’t own a pan of this size. Don’t worry, Jd reassures me. He always uses one of our 12″ x 16″ cookie sheets instead. I am doubtful. Does he size-up the recipe? Does he adjust the baking time? Is he sure? He’s very sure, he has made this recipe with this pan, multiple times. Okay, fine—off to the store.

At Thriftway, things go pretty smoothly. A small glitch when he asks if we need peanut butter and I remind him we got a two-pack at Costco last week. He laughs that he could forget such a thing in only a week. But then he gets snippy when in the soup aisle I remind him that we also bought a “flat” of chicken noodle soup. “Why do you assume I would forget that?” he complains. Why indeed? While I am in the produce section, Jd also gets mildly admonished by the Pepsi Corp. stockperson who catches him cheating on the iTunes contest. She has watched him tilt the bottle to sneak a look at the cap to see if he has a winner. He feels no shame.

Home again—time for Jd to cook. I try to prepare myself for the impending combination of Jd in the kitchen with a pound of powdered sugar. I feel like I do a pretty good job of not hovering, but as I’m folding laundry he comes to me holding one of our cookie sheets. You saw it coming, I’m sure. He has realized that, in fact, he has in the past used the smaller size, which we no longer have. He makes store trip number two to get a pan as the batter sits ready on the counter.

As the cake bakes, he makes the glaze on the stovetop. The recipe says to glaze the cake as soon as it comes out of the oven, but when the timer beeps, Jd finds that the cake has risen alarmingly into a dome, rather than remaining flat. I tell him that it should fall as it cools. Be patient. However, wanting to follow the recipe exactly, Jd proceeds to pour hot chocolate glaze onto the convex surface of the hot cake. Gravity exerts its influence, of course, and soon Jd has a sheet pan surrounded by several inches of gooey icing-covered counter. He laughs. I need to leave the kitchen.

Finally, he is done. The remaining glaze has been spread onto the cake, which has flattened somewhat. Wanting to sample his creation, Jd cuts a small piece from the corner. “Hm. It’s not quite right,” he says, “I can’t serve that.” Optimistically, he tastes a piece from the opposite corner of the pan. Still, there is something not quite right. He surmises that what he tastes is the buttermilk. But he has made this recipe before, and it always has buttermilk in it. “The only thing that I could have possibly done wrong is put in a tablespoon of baking powder instead of a teaspoon.” A-ha! I ask if it’s bitter. “I think that’s the buttermilk,” he answers. I sample the cake myself. The strange dome-like phenomena is now explained; the cake tastes characteristically alkaline. Too much baking powder, alright. Jd makes store trip number three: more powdered sugar and buttermilk. Cake #1 goes into the trash. The ants will feast tonight.

While Cake #2 is happening, I go to work on this story. As I make my way to the computer, Jd asks me hopefully if perhaps the omission of the cinnamon could have caused the abnormal rising and taste—he’s not sure he added the cinnamon the first time. I assure him that the cinnamon is completely optional; cinnamon, or lack thereof, is not the cause of his problems.

All sounds like it’s going well from the kitchen, until Jd, obviously pleased with himself, comes in to tell me that he forgot to get more buttermilk at the store (trip #3). “But,” he crows, “there was just barely enough left from the first one!”

I hope you all enjoy the Texas Sheet Cake. It has been a labour of love.

Read More →

12 March 2004• by

The Best Uncle Ever

In which I am the best uncle ever.

My brother, Tony, brought Alex — the youngest of his two sons — to work this morning. I entertained him for a while. Or, rather, he entertained me.

Alex comes into my office, wearing his Gap-brand child’s hoodie. I shake my head. He’s three-years-old and already a slave to fashion.

Alex: I’ve got a candy in my mouth and in my pocket
Me: You have two candies?
Alex: I have a blue one. In my mouth
Me: What flavor is it
Alex: It’s blue (Accidentally spits it onto the ground. It’s covered with dirt.)
Me: (Loudly, so Tony can hear.) Quick. You’ve only got five seconds. Pick it up and put it in your mouth.
Alex: It’s yicky.
Me: Nah, it’s okay. It was only on the floor for two seconds, tops.

Me: What are you doing here today?
Alex: (Pointing at the floor, which is bare plywood.) We just colored on that. (He and his brother, Michael, have colored on it many times in the past.)
Me: What are you doing here today, Alex?
Alex: Nothing.
Me: And what will you do later?
Alex: Dad said I can do mumble. (Grins.)
Me: Do what?
Alex: Nothing.
Me: Do what?
Alex: Nothing.

Alex: (Pointing at my breakfast bowl.) What’s this?
Me: It’s a bowl. What does it look like?
Alex: Frosting. (Pause.) There’s a bug in it. There’s an ant. There’s an ant at your house. There’s one right there.
Me: Let’s see. Oh, there is. Gross.
Alex: (Urgently.) You’ve got to get him. His touch is yicky. Yick. I’ve gotta tell Daddy. I’ve gotta tell daddy there’s an ant. (Runs from my office, shouting—) Dad, there’s an ant in his house!

Me: Are you going to come over to my house tomorrow?
Alex: Yeah.
Me: Are you?
Alex: Yeah.
Me: What are you going to do at my house?
Alex: Just play toys.
Me: Tony, are your kids coming over tomorrow?
Tony: For the chicken fest?
Me: (Indignant.) Chicken noodle fest.
Tony: Uh — hadn’t planned on it.
Me: Why not?
Tony: They’ll break your stuff, dude.
Me: Do you think they’ll be the only kids there?
Tony: The only destructive ones.
Alex: Only me here. I’m the only one.
Me: Come on. (Peer-pressure voice.) Everyone will be there.
Tony: Is Jeff going to be there?
Me: Yeah.
Tony: There you go. Alex’ll be pushing Noah down the stairs. Alex doesn’t like babies.
Me: Neither does Emma. They could team up. They’d beat up all the other kids.
Tony: Ha. There you go. Tell me what time you want people to leave, and I’ll bring my kids over then.
Alex: (Panicked, feeling inside his pocket) I don’t feel candy. (Relieved) Yes I do.

Alex: (Comes in, carrying a huge bottle of water that Nick has poured for him) Lookit! This is Big Water.
Me: Yes it is.
Alex: This is Big Water.
Me: I’ll give you a box of candy if you drink all that water.
Tony: Alex, can you sing that song?
Nick: There’s a Big Water song?
Alex: (Singing) Big big wahteh, big gibberish.

Me: Do you wanna go for a walk?
Alex: Yeah, let’s go outside.
Me: Look, your Uncle Jeff is burning a fire. Do you wanna go see?
(We walk out to the burn pile.)
Jeff: Your mom and dad sure had a lot of stuff to burn. It made a lot of black smoke.
Alex: It’s really hot.
Me: Fire is like that.
Jeff: The black smoke was probably shoes. (No, I don’t get it either.)
(Alex asks to be taken inside the shop where the guys are making boxes.)
Me: Cristobal, do you want another niño?
Cristobal: Where’s Michael?
Alex: At school.
Cristobal: At school?
Me: Preschool.
José: (Shouting from outside) Hello, Alex.
Me: Come on, let’s get out of the way.
(As we move aside, there’s a loud thud behind me. I look back and Alex is flat against the floor, his Big Water rolling away. He’s tripped over a piece of wood.)
Me: Alex, are you okay?
Cristobal: (Behind Alex, holding his hands in the air, grinning.) I didn’t do it.
Me: Come on, big guy, you’re okay. Here’s your Big Water.

(We watch José drive the forklift for awhile until Alex gets fidgety.)
Me: Now where do you want to go?
Alex: (Pointing at warehouse) Let’s walk through there.
(We walk through the warehouse, looking at the big stacks of corrugated. The air compressor comes on and scares us. Outside I can see robins hopping along. One has a worm in its mouth.)
Me: Look, there’s some birds. They’re robins. (Alex runs at them.) No, don’t chase them! If you chase them, they fly away and then you can’t look at them anymore
Alex: There’s another one. (Runs at it.)

Alex: Let’s sit down.
Me: We can sit down when we get inside.
Alex: I want to sit down now. My head hurts.
Me: What, do you have a five minute pain delay?

(Time passes. Alex comes into my office again.)
Alex: I wanna show you something.
Me: What is it? (Alex takes my hand and leads me down the hallway to the kitchen.)
Alex: (Pointing.) I want some of that.
Me: Ding Dongs? (Pause.) That sounds like a great idea. (Cackles.) There you go.
Alex: Mmm. Mmmm. Mmm. Mmm.
Me: I’m the best uncle ever!

Comments


On 12 March 2004 (12:29 PM),
Lynn said:

So, if you’re really the best uncle ever, you should be taking your nephews, and other young friends, to the “Sing-a-long Wizard of Oz!” In the tradition of “Sing-a-long Sound of Music,” it’s coming to Cinema 21 on NW 21st in Portland from April 9 – 18. It’s great fun and costumes are not only encouraged, but rewarded!



On 12 March 2004 (01:51 PM),
nate said:

“Jesus: (Behind Alex, holding his hands in the air, grinning.) I didn’t do it.”

This line is inadvertantly hilarious until you realize that you don’t mean the Jesus. 😉 That Jesus; such a prankster! Even being God’s son can’t stop him from being wacky!



On 12 March 2004 (04:37 PM),
Nikchick said:

Nate’s right! That line totally gave me visions of a twisted sort of Family Circus strip. Jesus, as the invisible “Not Me”, standing over Billy’s prone body, shrugging.

Ha! That’s going to amuse me for some time.



On 12 March 2004 (04:48 PM),
J.D. Roth said:

Ha! Lynn, your Wizard of Oz comment is funny because one of my favorite parents has prohibited me from screening the film for her children (three and five). She and I have different opinions about what is age-appropriate for children, but I try to respect her wishes.

As for the Jesus thing, I’ve changed the name to Cristobal which, while not true is True enough. Know what I mean?



On 12 March 2004 (05:42 PM),
Mom (Sue) said:

This makes me want to see Alex soooo bad! But it’s nice that he is old enough for his dad to take him to the shop when he comes in on his day off. And it’s good that he get more firmly introduced to the world of his uncles. (I was going to say “wacky world” but somehow thought that wasn’t something a loving mother would say, especially since those uncles are such nice people.) -G- I would have loved to have him come here today but I was feeling pretty rotten late this morning and afternoon so it wouldn’t have worked. I will have to miss your fest tomorrow for the same reason, J.D.; also, because I don’t do chicken noodle soup. Since you have invited the whole Internet, have you been able to come up with a head count?



On 12 March 2004 (09:45 PM),
Virginia said:

Sounds like such a fun idea. (Chicken Noodle Soup)
Since I can’t be there I guess I’ll eat a can of Chicken Noodle Soup for lunch in memory of the box of Chicken Noodle Soup mom used to keep under the bench in the breakfast nook. I think it was just for Steve’s boys. Was it you JD or was it for Jeff?



On 13 March 2004 (09:53 AM),
Emily said:

haha. man i wish my uncle let me eat candy off the ground! i have to do it when no one is looking. hehe



On 13 March 2004 (10:10 AM),
Mom (Sue) said:

I think that all three of my boys loved Grandma and Grandpa’s chicken noodle soup, Virginia. It was always Campbell’s, too. I never have liked that soup — I guess I could be doing ads for Progresso. -G- The way I’m feeling, I probably ought to also be celebrating J.D.’s party by eating some of the Progresso chicken noodle soup I think I have on hand (I know I have some of their chicken and wild rice). I knew yesterday that I wouldn’t be feeling good enough to make it to J.D. and Kris’s soup fest because if I get to feeling crummy, it never lasts for just one day. Naturally, I am feeling worse today. Bummer, that. I will miss the opportunity to see my little grandson Noah as well as his parents and uncle and aunt. I hope that J.D. writes an entry about who all else was there and who I missed seeing.

Read More →

11 March 2004• by

On the Malleability of Time

In which I meditate on the strange ebbs and flows of time, it’s strange ability to elongate and contract to fit our mental state.

We say that the hour of death cannot be forecast, but when we say this we imagine that hour as placed in an obscure and distant future. It never occurs to us that it has any connection with the day already begun or that death could arrive this same afternoon, this afternoon which is so certain and which has every hour filled in advance. — Marcel Proust

I was in a car crash a couple of years ago.

It took only five or ten seconds for the tractor trailer to sideswipe my Geo Storm; for my car to lurch into the air and then to veer to one side and slam headlong into the guard rail at fifty-five miles per hour; for the airbag to deploy (so quickly that I didn’t even realize it had happened until I came to my senses) and pop me in the nose; for the car to spin around and around; for me to gaze about the cabin, marveling at the surreal quality of the dusty air (the airbag is packed with a powdery substance); for the car to stall and come to a halt on the shoulder of the south Wilsonville overpass.

It took only five or ten seconds for all of this to occur, yet it seemed much longer. The moment the car lurched into the air, jarring me from my early morning stupor, Time altered.

Five or ten seconds seemed to take five or ten minutes.

When it was all finished, my memory seemed incomplete. I had the memories one might be expected to have of a five or ten second event, one in which the sensory overload made it impossible to grasp everything. Yet, my mind seemed to understand that five or ten minutes had elapsed. My inability to reconcile these two perceptions of Time caused me anxiety, and does to this day.

Writers understand the malleability of Time. They’re taught to use the notion to their advantage.

When something traumatic happens quickly — like a car crash — the writer focuses on the details. Seconds of action can take pages to describe.

Conversely, long and tedious events are shown only briefly. Days of waiting for a letter might be represented by a single sentence.

Some days Time seems to ooze.

I look at the clock and it’s 8:12. I spend what seems like hours on quotes and orders and surfing the net, and when I look up, it’s 8:32. Twenty minutes have passed. I could have sworn two hours had elapsed.

Other days Time seems to flow uncontrollably, gushing through holes in a dike.

I try to stop the holes, but to no avail. It’s 9:37. I do one quote. It’s 9:57. I do another quote. It’s 10:12. I enter orders. It’s 10:42. An hour has rushed through the dike, though it seems to have been only minutes.

What we are doing is making our way back to life, shattering with all our force the ice of the habitual and the rational which instantly congeals over reality and keeps us from ever seeing it, finding a passage back into the open sea. — Marcel Proust

When I was a boy, I was impatient. Each minute I did nothing seemed like an hour. It tore me up to sit still, idle, waiting. I fidgeted. I fussed.

Now that I am approaching mid-life, waiting doesn’t bother me. I can sit waiting for hours. My internal thought-world is rich, so that it is no imposition to be forced to pass the Time. To do so merely gives me an opportunity to examine some heretofore unexplored path of thought.

If I am experiencing something rare and pleasurable — a delicious meal, a fascinating conversation, an encounter with a beautiful woman, an instance of intense intellectual stimulation — and I have the presence to realize I am experiencing something rare and pleasurable, I make an effort to force myself to consciously elongate Time.

I don’t mean that I try to prolong the experience in an objective sense, stretching actual seconds into minutes — though sometimes this is true — I mean that I try to force myself into a heightened state of awareness, one in which I note every detail of my environment, I savor every nuance, so that the subjective passage of Time seems greater. Then, when reliving those moments, they seem longer than they were.

In theory one is aware that the earth revolves, but in practice one does not perceive it, the ground upon which one treads seems not to move, and one can live undisturbed. So it is with Time in one’s life. — Marcel Proust

Proust makes the study of Time the central theme in his seven-volume Remembrance of Things Past. The final volume of his novel is actually called Time Regained (or, in some translations, The Past Recaptured).

Proust’s meditation on Time, filled as it is with a sea of dependent clauses, proves too daunting for most people, which is unfortunate because it contains so many sharp insights not only on the passage of Time, but also on truth, beauty, freedom, and love.

I am convinced that I have “absolute Time sense”. As long as I’m at least vaguely aware of the passage of Time, I can usually tell you the actual Time (or something close to it).

Despite my learned ability to alter the subjective shape of Time, there are instances in which I cannot alter its flow in my favor. These are those excruciating moments of embarrassment, or of oppression in the face of a boor, or of anxious panic. During these moments, Time seems incorrigible, beyond my grasp, a cruel and capricious tyrant. A half hour trapped in a car with a person I find offensive seems to take hours, or days. In these instances, when Time has shaken itself from my grasp, I feel helpless.

Sometimes when I’m programming, or playing a computer game, I lose my sense of Time. I may begin playing a game at ten in the morning, and the next time I’m aware of my surroundings, night has fallen. Kris has gone to bed. I’ve squandered hours on world conquest or on redesigning a web site. For some reason, when programming or playing computer games, my mind has a tendency to enter a sort of fugue state in which all that exists is the program or the game. Everything else is peripheral. Time no longer exists. I don’t eat. I don’t go the bathroom. I don’t hear the phone (or my wife). Only the computer world exists.

I’m not sure I like this state.

It is cliché to speak of a man’s life flashing before his eyes as he lays dying. Yet, I hope this will be the case with me.

I hope to have the presence of mind, the ability, the strength to force myself to relive my life, in real-time if possible, as my body fails in those waning seconds. Better still would be a recursive loop, one in which at the end of this relived life, as my viewed self lies upon his death bed, he forces himself to relive his life.

In this way it might be possible to live forever.

Comments

On 11 March 2004 (09:36 AM),
Dana said:

JD: Only the computer world exists.

I experience this state, but not when you do. I experience it when I’m buried in an engrossing book, or when I’m programming, or when I’m drawing, or when I’m working on math problems.

I don’t do that last one very often anymore.

I really quite like the sensation of being that deep inside my own mind, but unfortunately it seems to require a lot of time to truly experience, and subjectively it always seems like a short period of time has elapsed.

On 11 March 2004 (10:12 AM),
Tammy said:

There’s something odd about the computer. Nowhere does time slide by quicker than when I’m on the internet. And… there is no single pursuit of mine that makes me feel worse than when I’ve lost time by being on the computer. I don’t know why but I always have a vague feeling of not really experiencing life if I’ve spent too much time on this machine. I get done with my day an there’s no feeling of accomplishment and pride in my days acheivements. I can’t say why this is I only know that it is.

On 11 March 2004 (11:11 AM),
Amanda said:

Great entry today.

On 11 March 2004 (11:33 AM),
J.D. said:

Tammy, I, too, feel dirty when I spend too much time at the computer. Yet, like an addict, I find it difficult to tear myself away. I’ve tried to do so in the past, but I cannot. I’m hooked. And the computer world is not wholly bad, to be sure. If I were more prone to moderation, it might be something I could overlook. I am not prone to moderation. I am prone to excess, and to addiction, and so I spend too much time on the computer in various endeavors. It makes me feel dirty.

Thanks, Amanda. I should share the source of inspiration for today’s entry. I’m currently reading the science fiction novel Hyperion by Dan Simmons. One of its central themes is Time, and the way in which we perceive it. Simmons plays with this concept in several ways.

First of all, there are the mysterious Time Tombs, ancient artifacts which emanate a “temporal tide”. They disrupt the flow of Time around them, and the extent of this disruption varies in its radius, ebbing and flowing like a tide.

Around these tombs roams a creature called The Shrike. Among other qualities, The Shrike is unbound by Time. It seems to move freely through Time. In particular, it has the ability to remove itself from Time, performing any number of things in a fraction of a second. Simmons takes care not to represent this as superhuman speed or as the ability to stop Time; instead, he portrays it as some third option, as if The Shrike were somehow immune to Time.

Hyperion borrows its structure from The Cantebury Tales. In the novel, a group of pilgrims is traveling to The Time Tombs. As they travel, they tell their stories. These stories are amazing, sometimes poignant. My favorite, so far, is all about Time:

Sol and his wife have a daughter, Rachel. She is an angelic child. She grows up to be an angelic young woman, an archaeologist. She goes to Hyperion to study the Time Tombs. In a freak accident, she suffers “temporal poisoning” — she is infected by Time. This poisoning has a strange effect. She begins to live her life in reverse. She goes to bed today as a twenty-five year old woman, and she wakes tomorrow a day younger in every way. Her body is a day younger. Her memories are a day younger. Everything about her is a day younger. If she met you today, she won’t remember you tomorrow, because for her it is now the day before and you haven’t come into her life. For twenty-five years, Rachel ages backward, one day at a time, losing memories, losing friends, losing knowledge, losing abilities.

It’s a poignant story, utterly fascinating, and the kind of thing that makes me stop to think about Time for ten minutes, or twenty.

Mostly, though, it causes my mind to percolate until I’m sitting at the computer, entering invoices, and all of a sudden I’m stuck in a reverie about Time, a reverie I have to write down to share.

I’m a geek.

On 11 March 2004 (12:36 PM),
Lisa said:

A few years ago, I read a book called _Finding Flow_ by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. I’m not sure that I can do it justice in a short explanation, but the gist is that when you’re unaware of time passing (and of yourself in general), that’s flow. It’s basically being “at one” with your task. And if you do things where you find flow and appreciate the experience, you’re getting more out of your life. (That said, I don’t think that every task where you lose yourself is a good one–the computer being an excellent example.)

Anyway, it’s another look on the idea of time passing. If you’re interested, I can loan the book to you…

On 11 March 2004 (08:26 PM),
Aurora said:

You probably won’t read this, but there is a mathematical theory that proposes a reason for why time seems to move more quickly as we age. When we were young we had only been alive for a small fraction of our life, so a minute seems like forever in relation to the short time that we have been alive; however, as we age the passage of time in reference to the amount of time we spend on earth is shorter, so time seems to pass more quickly. There were equations and stuff along with this but I certainly don’t remember them.

On 11 March 2004 (10:17 PM),
nate said:

Is all this time philosophizing brought on by Donnie Darko? Or did you just finish reading The Philosophy of Time Travel by Roberta Sparrow? 😉

On 24 May 2005 (04:41 PM),
lewstermax said:

Time does not exist.
I have proven this, since I live backward right now, like that Merlin guy.
I was really near death when I was 20. Now I’m 48, and life is bran new! Yeah, I like that kind of cereal.
Hen way, time is an illusion, and merely a convention used to make clocks tick, or vibrate, or lose time; batteries wear out too.
Oh, and its good for clock makers too.
Anyway, if there is time, its one breath to the next. Any Zen master will tell you that. The one hand clapping koan, that was just to get you to snap out of your dazed and confused mind set, and wake up to the brazen fact that without breathing, nothing else will keep you alive! Nothing.
Try breathing deep space some time—I know I did.

Read More →

28 February 2004• by

Founding Brothers

In which the book Founding Brothers gives me some insight into the nature of our two-party political system.

I complain loudly and often about the United States’ two-party system. I think it’s ludicrous to pretend like there are only two sides to every political issue, and I think that the sides the parties choose are often arbitrary at best.

It’s my disdain for out two-party system that has prompted me to institute a personal voting rule: I always vote for the strongest third-party candidate unless I feel strongly about the Republican or Democrat. As a result, my Presidential votes have been cast for Ross Perot, John Hagelin, and Ralph Nader. (This fall, however, I’ll make an exception and vote for the anti-Bush, which now seems like it’ll be John Kerry.)

I’ve always wondered why we have such a rigid two-party system in this country. I’ve asked around, but nobody’s ever been able to provide a satisfactory answer.

The other day I checked out a bunch of audiobooks to rip into iTunes. One of these was Founding Brothers by the controversial Joseph J. Ellis. The Pulitzer Prize-winning Founding Brothers (originally recommended by Duane Krings, and then by Kris) explores how those larger-than-life characters of American mythology, the Founding Fathers, wrestled with the incipient idea of American nationhood. (Though, considering, Ellis’ track-record with truth, one has to wonder how reliable his stories are.)

I’ve been listening to the book’s preface this week on my drives to and from work. It’s been interesting, if a bit tedious. Then, yesterday on the trip home, I came to the following passage. Though this is long, it is well worth reading. And comprehending.

It is truly humbling, perhaps even dispiriting, to realize that the [modern] historical debate over the revolutionary era and the early republic merely recapitulates the ideological debate conducted at the time, that historians have essentially been fighting the same battles, over and over again, that the members of the revolutionary generation fought originally among themselves. Though many historians have taken a compromise or split-the-difference position over the ensuing years, the basic choice has remained constant, as historians have declared themselves Jeffersonians or Hamiltonians, committed individualists or dedicated nationalists, liberals or conservatives, then written accounts that favor one camp over the other, or that stigmatize one side by viewing it through the eyes of the other, much as the contestants did back then. While we might be able to forestall intellectual embarrassment by claiming that the underlying values at stake are timeless, and the salient questions classical in character, the awkward truth is that we have been chasing our own tails in an apparently endless cycle of partisan pleading. Perhaps because we are still living their legacy, we have yet to reach a genuinely historical perspective on the revolutionary generation.

But, again, in a way that Paine would tell us was commonsensical and Jefferson would tell us was self-evident, both sides in the debate have legitimate claims on historical truth and both sides speak for the deepest impulses of the American Revolution. With the American Revolution, as with all revolutions, different factions came together in common cause to overthrow the reigning regime, then discovered in the aftermath of their triumph that they had fundamentally different and politically incompatible notions of what they intended. In the dizzying sequence of events that comprises the political history of the 1790s, the full range of their disagreement was exposed and their different agenda for the United States collided head-on. Taking sides in this debate is like choosing between the words and the music of the American Revolution.

What distinguishes the American Revolution from most, if not all, subsequent revolutions worth of the name is that in the battle for supremacy, for the “true meaning” of the Revolution, neither side completely triumphed. Here I do not just mean that the American Revolution did not “devour its own children” and lead to blood-soaked scenes a the guillotine or the firing-squad wall, though that is true enough. Instead, I mean that the revolutionary generation found a way to contain the explosive energies of the debate in the form of an ongoing argument or dialogue that was eventually institutionalized and rendered safe by the creation of political parties. And the subsequent political history of the United States then became an oscillation between new versions of the old tension, which broke out in violence only on the occasion of the Civil War. In its most familiar form, dominant in the nineteenth century, the tension assumes a constitutional appearance as a conflict between state and federal sovereignty. The source of the disagreement goes much deeper, however, involving conflicting attitudes toward government itself, competing versions of citizenship, differing postures toward the twin goals of freedom and equality.

But the key point is that the debate was not resolved so much as built into the fabric of our national identity. If that means the United States is founded on a contradiction, then so be it. With that one bloody exception, we have been living with it successfully for over two hundred years. Lincoln once said that America was founded on a proposition that was written by Jefferson in 1776. We are really founded on an argument about what that proposition means.When shown in this light, it all makes sense to me. The friction between Republicans and Democrats, and the structure of our two party system, is not something to chafe against; it’s inherent in our political system, it’s an integral part of our Constitution. It’s as if there wasn’t one country founded as the United States, but two, and they’ve been living together, hopelessly tangles, for two hundred years. It’s like yin and yang. It’s like a schizophrenic child. We cannot have one without the other. Democrats need Republicans, both for balance and to provide a source against which they can contrast their own ideas. Conversely, Republicans need Democrats for the same reasons.

Where, then, does that leave me, a dyed-in-the-wool independent? I’m just happy to see that there’s a reason for the to-and-fro.

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07 February 2004• by

Stop! I Will Tell You What to Do

In which Kris isn’t bossy — she just likes to tell me what to do.

I’m at the sink, cleaning the dishes, when the following conversation occurs:

Kris: Since the Gingeriches aren’t doing their banquet on Valentine’s Day, do you wanna do something together?

J.D.: Sure. What do you have in mind? (Thinking: Dinner at Higgins or at Tong King Garden, or maybe even a quick trip the coast.)

Kris: Let’s go bowling!Sometimes I feel like I’m living with a stranger.

I’m grogging awake. Kris is folding and putting away the laundry. (We have an ongoing deal. I keep her car fueled, and she does my laundry, except for ironing. I hate to do laundry. Or, more precisely, I just never get around to it.)

Kris is trying to put away my “I agree with Tyler and Pete” t-shirt (and other recently purchased thrift store clothing), but there’s no room for it. Plus I’m giving her lip.

Kris: Alright, you’ve just earned a major chore for this weekend, boy-o. You’ve got to rearrange your clothes. Until you do, you’re not allowed to buy another piece of clothing. No pants. No shirts. No belts. No socks. Nothing. If you do, I’ll just start throwing things away. You’ve got t-shirts you never wear because they’re so far in the back of your drawers that you never see them. You only grab the top thing. [ed: It’s true.] You have friggin’ t-shirts coming out of your butt!

At this point, she notices that I’m transcribing the conversation.

Kris: Stop it! or I’m going to knock you down!Husband abuse! Husband abuse!

So, repeating to myself that mantra I developed oh-so-long ago (“Kris Gates is always right. Kris Gates is always right.”), I pull out my t-shirt drawers (of which there are three) and put them on the bed. We sort t-shirts.

We can agree that some t-shirts stay and that others must be purged, but on other t-shirts we have disagreements. For example, on our trip to Crater Lake last fall, I bought a bright red USA t-shirt for $4. I want to keep it, if only just for yardwork.

Kris: J.D., that shirt is very ugly. It is in your best interest not to wear it. It doesn’t matter what you wear it for.

Ultimately, it stays. “You’ve been very good,” Kris tells me. “I guess you can keep that for now.”

We’ve got a gallery of quotes taped to the inside of our front door. Many of you have seen them, but for those who haven’t, here are some of Kris’ gems:

I’m not bossy; I just like to tell you what to do.

I know you’re in here to be sweet, but I really don’t want to listen to Johnny Cash right now.

You complicate my life by thinking for yourself. Just do what I tell you.

Your happiness is dependent on my happiness.

Stop! I will tell you what to do.I love my wife. Sometimes our distinct individual goofinesses makes for amusing conversations, though.

Comments


On 07 February 2004 (10:01 AM),
J.D. Roth said:

Just to be clear: this entry is meant to be funny, not to be mean. I love Kris, and I find our interactions amusing. The reason she has to boss me around so much is that, in many ways, I act like a five-year-old…



On 07 February 2004 (10:35 AM),
dowingba said:

Wow, you two use hyperlinks when you talk to each other? Quite impressive.



On 07 February 2004 (11:01 AM),
Johnny Doe said:

It is of significant comfort to me to know that I’m not the only one with a She Who Must Be Obeyed.

Do you think it’s genetic? Maybe it’s on that odd chromosome that they have?



On 07 February 2004 (03:32 PM),
Tiffany said:

It is not genetic. I am very good at taking orders. All day I have been helping Rich, in the garage, put one of the cars back together. I stand there, very quietly, until Rich says, “Hold this” or “Hand me the hammer” etc.

However, when he is in my kitchen, I make all of the rules.



On 07 February 2004 (08:46 PM),
Tammy said:

Now this is an entry I can relate too. Greg has tons of shirts. Half of them he doesn’t even know exist. I was married for years before his mom and I decided enough is enough. He had this old orange courderoy (SP?) suit, mind you, from high school. It was ORANGE! He had only worn it a couple times. I said something about getting rid of it and he looked at me like I was nuts. So one day I grabbed his mom and showed her that suit. She was shocked that Greg still had it since it had been purchased in the early 70’s! She grabbed that thing and carted it to good will before Greg knew what was happening. Several years later he asked for it and I informed him that years ago his mom had gotten rid of it. What could he say? His mom had done it! There was nothing to say.

He just keeps things forever!

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05 February 2004• by

Ebony and Ivory

In which my readers and I try to remember the first record albums we ever owned. In which I discuss the etymology of ‘flotch’.

On our drive home from Yakima, we were each trying to remember the first rock concert we attended. That, coupled with yesterday’s entry, has me thinking about the first record albums I ever owned.

I think my first record album was a Christmas present from my parents: Paul McCartney’s Tug of War, which featured “Ebony and Ivory” and “Take it Away”. (My favorite song from the album was “Wanderlust” — oh, how I loved that song. I should download it.) That same Christmas, Jeff got Men at Work’s first album, Business as Usual (with “Who Can it Be Now?” and “Down Under”). The very first album Jeff and I bought (I think it was actually with his money) was Asia’s eponymous debut. From there the floodgates opened. I joined a record club, and soon we had all the latest from Journey, Styx, Stevie Nicks, Saga, Loverboy, and Duran Duran. Semi-regular trips to the Fred Meyer in Oregon City yielded a bountiful harvest of 45s, all of which I still own.

I can also remember my first CDs. In the fall of 1988, I joined a CD club before I even owned a CD player. My first four CDs were U2’s The Unforgettable Fire, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, a Kinks greatest hits collection (which appears to be no longer available), and a fourth CD I’ve forgotten (possibly a compilation of Big Band music).

Can you remember your first album(s)?

Tammy entitled one of her recent entries “flotch”, which I found rather amusing. Flotch is a word that Paul and I invented early in high school. (Perhaps he can remember the exact genesis of the word; I cannot.) I seem to recall that we were just dinking around, making up words, and one of us came up with flotch. It came to be a catch-all word, and we’d use it in various parts of speech: “Get the flotch out of here!” “That movie was flotchy.” “I flotched up my test.” “I had a bit of flotch for lunch.” With time, I’ve come to use the word in the same way that others might use the word “stuff”. To me, flotch is just a random collection of things. Belly-button lint is a great example of flotch. I bring this up because a google search reveals a bastardization of the word flotch that is completely inappropriate. And gross.

Comments


On 05 February 2004 (09:14 AM),
Amanda said:

The first cassette I ever bought was “Faith” by George Michael (shut up!).

The first CDs I bought (a dual purchase) were U2’s “Achtung Baby” and “Chronicles” by Rush.

Good times.



On 05 February 2004 (09:46 AM),
Tammy said:

Too funny. I must have gotten the word from you somewhere along the line.Hmmm. Wouldn’t it be something if your little homespun word caught on in the blogging world? You could become famous! (Not that it will happen from my piddly little weblog) 🙂



On 05 February 2004 (10:56 AM),
J.D. said:

Nick says that his first albums were: Queen’s “A Night at the Opera”, an album by the Boston Pops, and an album by that piano sensation, Ferrante and Teicher. He says that after those three albums, it was a long time before he bought any others.

Nick never posts comments. He just walks over to my office to tell me them in person.



On 05 February 2004 (12:05 PM),
Aimee said:

Just a stumbled on a thought that Tammy’s comment inspired: Has the invention of a word ever made anyone famous? I’m not talking about proper nouns here; just regular ol’ verbs, adverbs, adjectives, and the like … What say you?



On 05 February 2004 (12:29 PM),
Paul said:

I don’t recall the day that “flotch” became a part of our high school lexicon. It was so appropriate , considering our environment, that the word was used often. In my world, the word just appeared one day to explain the amalgamation of culture around us.

The first record that I bought, with my parent’s money, was Michael Jackson’s Thriller. However, it was for my sister, I kinder act that I probably haven’t duplicated since, so I don’t count that as MY first record.

My first purchase was Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s Welcome To The Pleasuredome. That was a work of art! FGtH were produced to such a level that I was hooked by everything about them. This was a folded album cover, with a painting of strange animal figures engagaged in numerous sexual positions. My mother found the whole album to be nearly pornographic, especially after she listened to the song Ballad of 32. Having more discipline than JD with my money, I didn’t buy anything from the catalog of FGtH products that was inserted in the sleeves of the album. Boy howdy did I ever want the whole lot of goods! This was all topped off by going to their concert. That was my first concert personally and my first of many with JD. Didn’t we camp out for tickets and end up in row 20 or something? We could see them lip-syncing from our seats!! I loved every Frankie moment of it. Who opened? OMD? If that were true, I may be reliving one of the greatest days of my teenage years.



On 05 February 2004 (01:37 PM),
Amy Jo said:

This is embarrassing to admit, but my first albums were disco collections put out by RONCO (70s), the soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever (1977), and the soundtrack to Grease (1978). I had a pre-pubescent desire to be Olivia Newton John. She was soooo beautiful . . .I spent the seventies, my under-10 years, listening to 8-tracks that ran from disco to Zepplin and the Who to the Carpenters and my beloved Olivia (Have you never mellow?).

The first album of taste that I can recall buying was Synchronicity by the Police (1983). I feel like I was much younger than 13 when I bought this. I recall listening to it over and over again at slumber party my friend Heather Caldwell had. My first CD was Dream of the Blue Turtles in 1985. I had a thing for Sting (still do–he’s yummy!) I matured a lot between 83 and 85.



On 05 February 2004 (01:44 PM),
Denise said:

My first album (REAL music – not Disney stuff) was Van Halen, Van Halen. It was very good – I got it from my Aunt Terry who was a rocker for sure. She has now changed her name to Terin, though.



On 05 February 2004 (02:27 PM),
Lynn said:

I think Shakespeare’s rather famous for inventing a few words and/or phrases. 🙂

I hate to say that I think Thriller was my first album purchase as well. But my brother – 11 years older than I – gave me a large box of his 45’s to which I listened with great enthusiasm. Black Betty by Ram Jam, We Are the Champions by Queen, Life is Good by Joe Walsh, and American Pie by Don McLean were among my favorites! As was a song called Mr. Jaws in which a reporter told some story about jaws and sampled many different famous songs to give the answer to his question. For example, “Mr Jaws, what are you going to do now?” Answer, “Do the hustle!” It was good fun.



On 05 February 2004 (02:40 PM),
mac said:

vinyl: Depeche Mode “Some Great Reward”
CD: Guns n’ Roses “Appetite for Destruction”

Same day as G n’ R– Skid Row’s self titled album.

All three are still near and dear to my heart



On 05 February 2004 (06:42 PM),
mart said:

JD: tug of war is an exceptionally fine album. my parents got divorced in germany to that album so for me it encapsulates everything about my strange early teens in a foreign land, driving back and forth between strange towns while they “sorted” things out, fielding emotional gut punches all the time. i still listen to it sometimes and it still gives me chills. i’d burn ebony and ivory off it though, what a crap song… “you can dress me up a a robber” is my fave.



On 05 February 2004 (06:45 PM),
mart said:

btw:

first album? queen “the game”

first cd? i bought 5 that day… john coltrane “ballads”, sgt peppers, philip glass “solo piano”, steely dan “gaucho” and janes addiction “nothing’s shocking”.



On 05 February 2004 (08:21 PM),
Denise said:

Don’t ask Lynn the words to Black Betty, though, she never gets them right!



On 06 February 2004 (08:55 AM),
Lynn said:

Bam-a-lam, baby!



On 06 February 2004 (09:03 AM),
Dana said:

This is sort of embarrasing…

Vinyl: Switched On Bach 2 (Bach on a synthesizer)
Tape: Flood, They Might Be Giants
CD: Doctorin’ the Tardis (by ‘The Timelords’, aka KLF).

Hm. Speaking of Doctorin’ the Tardis, take a look at this! =)



On 06 February 2004 (10:50 AM),
Craig said:

First Vinyl (with my own money): Bruuuuuuuuce Springstein, “Born in the USA”

First Vinyl (not my own money, but which I caused to be purchased for me): Johnny Horton, “North to Alaska” (I experience not one bit of shame for this. Number two was Elvis, “Golden Records.”)

First CD: U2, “Achtung Baby” (Just had this on the other day.)

First Concert: Brian Adams, from a nosebleed seat, Sullivan Sports Arena. This was the concert event of the season in Anchorage that year (1987?). The Anchorage concert season was not impressive.



On 06 February 2004 (12:13 PM),
Kris said:

Okay, since Tiffany doesn’t seem inclined to share her story, I’ll tell it and she can correct me.

When I was 13 and she was 10, Thriller was at the Top O’ the Charts. Tiffany had saved up enough to go buy the album at the BX (Base Exchange on the Air Force Base). She arrived home very pleased with her independence, eager for a listen, but was soon crushed by the realization that she had purchased by mistake the all-instrumental extended version of the song “Thriller” instead of the complete album. Sobbing ensued. In my memory, my Mom took it back for an exchange and Tiffany was all smiles again. Is that right, Tiff?

Later, when my family lived in Hawaii, my Dad took regular business trips to South Korea. He brought back with him bootleg versions of the latest popular cassettes. I had bootleg Billy Joel, The Go-Go’s, Men at Work, Pat Benatar, Cyndi Lauper, Lionel Richie, etc. So, I guess you can blame my Dad for setting me on the twisted path of music pirating.

By the way, the first album I owned (gift from a friend– 5th grade slumber birthday party): Leif Garrett (ugh!!)
First album I ever bought myself: Hall & Oates (greatest hits, I think)– It had a purple & yellow cover.
I think I had met Jd by the time CD’s really became the thing, so I haven’t really had to buy my own music after that! Imagine! But I did get the Queen greatest hits double album a few years ago. Freddie Mercury was a friggin’ genius, right, Nick?



On 06 February 2004 (12:20 PM),
Nick said:

Absolutley!



On 06 February 2004 (01:21 PM),
Tiffany said:

Yes, Kris you are right. I think I shared that story on the blog at some time before.

First tape was Air Supply, Greatest Hits.

First CD, I think was a REM, but I may be wrong.

First concert Bon Jovi (I was given the ticket when a friend got sick)

First concert that I paid for, Depeche Mode.



On 06 February 2004 (04:20 PM),
Paul said:

First album (birthday present) “Ghost in the Machine” Police. Funny that both my album and my wife’s were by the Police.



On 07 February 2004 (11:16 AM),
Dave said:

First Album (vinyl): Star Wars Soundtrack
First CD: Yaz- Upstairs at Eric’s
First (Pop/Rock) Concert: Bonnie Raitt’s Nick of Time tour or The Crazy 8’s (I can’t remember which was first)



On 29 January 2005 (05:33 PM),
Larry said:

The word Flotch has a long history in my family. I first remember it in a song being sung to one of my smaller cousins. He was toilet training. The funny story that my uncle tells of his first encounter with the word is posted in my blog: http://flotchmaker.blogspot.com



On 29 January 2005 (05:33 PM),
Larry said:

The word Flotch has a long history in my family. I first remember it in a song being sung to one of my smaller cousins. He was toilet training. The funny story that my uncle tells of his first encounter with the word is posted in my blog: http://flotchmaker.blogspot.com

Read More →

04 February 2004• by

Child Development

In which I wonder: when is it appropriate for children to learn about racism? Other religions? Sex? When can they safely watch gunplay and fisticuffs on television? Also: I’ve a renewed interest in Greek mythology.

Kris and I are atheists. We’re not shy about the fact, yet we don’t advertise it, either. As I’ve mentioned before, my atheism is informed by healthy doses of Mormonism and Mennonitism.

We don’t have any children of our own. We do spend a lot of time with our friends’ children, especially with Harrison and Emma, the Gingerich kids. Most of these children are raised in devoutly Christian families. How, then, do we handle this? Do we see it as our responsibility to sway these kids to the one true path of atheism?

Absolutely not.

Mostly, we avoid the subject. I believe that children, especially those under six, are not prepared to handle Big Topics like comparative religion and sexual orientation and gender identity and racial prejudice. Perhaps the basics can be shared — “other people believe in different gods” — but it’s not my place to educate these children. It’s my place to support their parents without compromising my own value system.

How do I do this?

I never proselytize. If a child asks me a question, I either answer it honestly or, if appropriate, I’m evasive. For example, when Harrison asks me to read to him from a book of Bible stories, I tell him, “I don’t want to read that book right now.” He’s completely satisfied with that answer. And when he tells me Bible stories, I just listen and nod my head.

It’s fascinating to watch these kids develop. I love to watch the evolution of the childhood egotism. Children are, by nature, complete egotists, purely selfish. It’s only with time and experience that they learn to consider other people. The oldest kid I know is nearly six. At what age will he be ready to learn about comparative religion? About gender identity? About slavery? About the Holocaust? When did I learn about these things? Is the curriculum of our educational institutions already properly constructed so that, in general, kids are exposed to material appropriate for their stage of development?

How do parents cope with friends who have different beliefs? Tammy’s unwilling to read certain weblogs because they’re written by lesbians; how much more strongly must she feel about the people with which her children have contact? Does it make a difference if the unsavory types are family rather than friends?

At what age are kids ready to see gunplay and fisticuffs on television and in films? (When did you first see this stuff — I can remember watching westerns at the age of four or five.) At what age are they ready to the stories of the Greek and Roman gods?

I’ve been re-reading Greek and Roman mythology lately. It’s great stuff. Suddenly, I’m excited to see Troy instead of dreading it.

My favorite so far is the story of Pallas Athene (a.k.a. Athena) and her weaving contest with the young woman, Arachne. Here’s an abbreviated version of the tale (the details of which are slightly different than others I’ve read):

Arachne was renowned throughout the region of Lydia (in ancient Greece), for her skill in spinning and weaving. Her teacher was Athene, the goddess of wisdom. As Arachne spun and weaved the finest tapestries and fabrics, a great rivalry grew between them. Athene became jealous of her pupil. So Athene disguised herself as a withered old woman and visited the country girl at her loom. Expressing admiration, the old woman asked who was her teacher.

When the boastful Arachne denied that it had been Athene, the goddess removed her disguise and revealed her true identity. Flushed with anger, she said, “Those who defy the gods must make good their words. We will have a spinning contest to see who weaves the finer tapestry!”

News of the contest spread quickly, and from all over Lydia people came to watch. Athene wove a tapestry featuring an Olympic scene in which Nemesis, the goddess of vengeance, carried away those who dared challenge the immortals. The tapestry was very fine. But Arachne’s tapestry was even more beautiful and elaborate. She depicted scenes of the misbehavior of the gods and goddesses, of seduction, and of the unworthy tricks they played when they wanted their way. The work was perfect. Even Athene could not find a flaw in it.

Angered by Arachne’s skill and impertinence, Athene became enraged. Her hands tore at the tapestry, and she hit Arachne on the head with her weaving tools. In distress, Arachne turned away from the horrified gaze of the onlookers. She ran to the woods, put a rope around her neck, and tried to end her life.

Then Athene took pity on her mortal rival, and being a powerful goddess, she granted her a new life as a spider, the weaver with the ultimate skill in spinning. “Live on, wicked one,” the angry Athene said, “but always hanging, and let your children share your punishment.” And because of the goddess’s wrath, Athene’s body changed into that of a spider and she was thus doomed to spin and weave forever.My reading is so tangential. I started the Rosenbaum book on Hitler, was sidetracked by Proust, but now I’ve been even further sidetracked by mythology�

Tammy’s trying to send a trackback to this entry, but it’s not working, so I’ll do it in reverse. Here entry is The Lines I Draw, and discusses how she, as a parent, determines what her children should be exposed to.

Comments


On 04 February 2004 (08:23 AM),
Tiffany said:

I remember Mom letting me spend the night at a friend�s and go to their church as early as 1st grade. Mom was far more concerned that I would act up in their church then that I would be influenced by anything that was said there. I do remember one friend was not allowed to go to our church, I think that was 4th grade. We had to take her home Sunday morning on the way to church. I have realized that some religions are more easy going then others.

As for violence on TV, I was watching MASH when I was 5 years old (with Dad) and reading �The Body� by Stephen King by 3rd grade. I do not ever remember being told that I could not watch something because it was too violent. I cannot say if that was because there was less violence on TV or Mom just did not see it as a problem. I did watch a movie (when I was 5 or 6) about spiders taking over a small, mountain town that gave me nightmares.



On 04 February 2004 (09:34 AM),
Kris said:

I concur with Tiffany’s memories. Our parents didn’t limit what we saw or heard, but maybe they should have. My mom actually took me to see the movie “Audrey Rose” when I was 6; in this film, a young girl graphically burns to death in a car accident and then is reincarnated. Many scary psychoanalysis/hypnotism scenes as well as the lingering shots of the girls palms pounding on the car window as the flames engulf her. I also read a whole series of VC Andrews “novels” in 4th grade, filled with incest, child abuse & murder, teenage sexuality, suicide, and, of course, surviving in the attic by drinking your brother’s blood because your grandmother is starving you. What fun! I was in a depressed funk for WEEKS. Naturally, I read the entire series several times over.



On 04 February 2004 (09:35 AM),
jenefer said:

We introduced our children to other religions as soon as we could. This usually took the form of fun things, carnivals, Buddha’s birthday, a Seder feast, bar mitzvah, etc. We have friends of many different religions. I always felt that the more our children, and we, knew about other religions, the more we could see the similarities and feel certain that the one we chose was the best for us. I believe it is all the same GOD, so the trappings and celebrations are just man-made. Liz was ready to assimilate the religion much earlier than Adam. She was confirmed at 8 or 9 after a year long class at church.

Adam is still not confirmed. No pressure from us or anyone else will make him ready. Adam enjoyed his comparative religion class at Mater Dei HS his senior year. They explored all the major and many minor religions. I realized that he wasn’t ready any sooner when he came home and chatised me for never exposing him to other religions. He had never seen the religious aspects of the celebrations we attended at the Mormon, Buddhist, Muslim, Unitarian, Lutheran, etc. churches. All he saw was the surface fun. Each child is different. Parents have to be sensitive to that. That’s why parenting is so hard.

Bob, my husband, was confirmed just a year after Liz. That’s when he was ready.

Each different religion is a teaching opportunity for those committed to their own belief. We cannot help our children on the “right path” if we don’t understand or at least know another religion enough to answer questions and discuss it with our children.



On 04 February 2004 (10:13 AM),
J.D. said:

I apologize if this gets long, but y’all have me thinking about when certain “firsts” happened for me. Based on what I can remember, I had early exposure to violence, but was relatively sheltered from sex. (And I regret his now — I would have liked a period of sexual experimentation, and think it would have been quite healthy.) Here’s the best I can reconstruct:

Before school (I was never in preschool or kindergarten): I had pneumonia at some point. First stitches. I can remember seeing Papillon (released in late 1973, so I would have been four, almost five) and being aghast at a man losing his head to a guillotine. Worse still was Westworld (also late 1973), my first exposure to Michael Crichton’s single plot (which he recycles endlessly), with its rampaging murderous robots. When I was five, dad took me to Where the Red Fern Grows, which was also traumatic. (Mom, why did you guys take me to these films? Couldn’t you find babysitters?) Also, I saw War of the Worlds, which scared the hell out of me. Also, I can remember the day I learned to tie my shoes when I was five. We didn’t have a television, but I remember watching at friends’ houses: Lone Ranger (and other westerns), war movies, and lots and lots of cartoons. Mom, can you contribute what you remember about my early childhood development?

1st grade (6yo, 75-76): phonics, rudimentary American history (Bicentennial year), watch Six Million Dollar Man at friends’ houses

2nd grade (7yo, 76-77): comic books in full force, first Hardy Boys, see Star Wars five times, watch Star Trek every chance I get, dad takes me to see my first James Bond film, join Cub Scouts

3rd grade (8yo, 77-78): learn about molecules, water cycle, fractions and basic algebra (“solve for x” — I was given a fifth grade math book), read The Lord of the Rings (though it was above my head), first knowledge of sex

4th grade (9yo, 78-79): back to grade-level math, but it’s tedious, first computer (Apple II), wrote first stories, first correction of teacher, first Oregon history, first geology, first exposure to Native American issues, first soccer team, first interest in astronomy (thanks partly to Andrew Parker’s father), first Piers Anthony and Stephen R. Donaldson, first self-conscious anxiety, first hand-held computer game (LED football)

5th grade (10yo, 79-80): first computer programming in BASIC, all my spare change into comic books, joined Science Fiction Book Club, first masturbation, first Dungeons & Dragons, first slumber party and Saturday Night Live, discover Tintin

6th grade (11yo, 80-81): began to take writing seriously (writing in my spare time), first girlfriend (Gina Hafner), begin to check out library books just for the sex scenes, self-conscious anxiety increases

7th grade (12yo, 81-82): an entire unit on Greek and Roman mythology, taught about Holocaust, beginning of self-guided music discovery (i.e. I begin to listen to rock)

8th grade (13yo, 82-83): computer programming in assembly language, first Shakespeare, wrote first poetry, Jeff and I buy our first record album (Asia’s self-titled debut)

9th grade (14yo, 83-84): reject my old self with intent of becoming a new person, cast off old friends (sorry, Dave!), first kiss, first questioning of Mormonism, first and last shoplifting, first job, obsessed with Hemingway, first (and only) fistfight (though it wasn’t much of a fight since I refused to throw a punch), first rock concert (if Chicago is rock)

10th grade (15yo, 84-85): first understanding of abortion, watch first porn flick, first opportunity for sex, first skip a night’s sleep

11th grade (16yo, 85-86): first alcohol, first Greek philosophy, first real sensitivity to racial issues, feel called to missionary work, first out all night gallivanting around

12th grade (17yo, 86-87): introduction to existentialism, first Ayn Rand, first Dostoevsky, spend some limited time with “popular” kids, first knee injury

Fresh (18yo, 87-88): first IBM-PC, first education classes (want to teach grade school), first questioning of religion in general, first marijuana, first real sensitivity to gender issues, first problems with weight gain, first Mexican food (seriously)

Soph (19yo, 88-89): first Macintosh, first sex, agnostic, last marijuana, first real sensitivity to sexual orientation issues, first Chinese food (seriously), leave home permanently over Christmas break after fight with Dad

Jun (20yo, 89-90): continue path to become grade school teacher

Sen (21yo, 90-91): atheist, foolishly cast aside plans for teaching grade school

More as I think of it…



On 04 February 2004 (11:04 AM),
Lynn said:

I can’t believe you remember all of that! Holy Cow! I can barely remember the names of my teachers, let alone what level of math I was learning! But it was quite an impressive list, despite the occasional overshare. 😉



On 04 February 2004 (11:43 AM),
Tiffany said:

I remember learning a little about the Holocaust when I was 4. We were living in Germany then, I am sure that is why I heard about it so young. �Here is where a really bad man killed a man because he thought they prayed to the wrong God.� �Did they pray to the wrong God?� �No� �OK�.



On 04 February 2004 (11:51 AM),
Joel said:

Regarding the myth of Arachne as a student of Athene, I’m suddenly amused by the idea of the gods as weary high-school teachers. “Dude, who’d you get for Shop? Ah, man, Vulcan’s friggin’ brutal!”



On 04 February 2004 (12:40 PM),
Paul said:

I don’t understand your unwillingness to read the bible with the kid who asked. Can I assume that you weren’t going to be as entertained reading those stories as you would have been reading Dr. Seuss and therefore you didn’t follow through with the request? I would be suprised to find out that the subject matter of the story affected your decision to read the story or not.

I would be interested in a blog or link to a past blog in which you discussed how you relate to spirituality. The human spirit is a complex function and it has different connotations for me when compared to your atheism.



On 04 February 2004 (12:50 PM),
Dana said:

Well, with a lead-in like that…

(I’m going by ‘school years’ here. My birthday is in July, so in any given year, 197x, I am (x-1) during the first half, and x during the second half of it. Many of these memories are +/-1 year, as I can’t always place when two events happened in relation to one another, but I know *where* they happened, and we conveniently moved every few years).

2 yo/1972: We move from a rented house in the country with no kids around to our first house in a neighborhood filled with kids.

3 yo/1973: My brother is born.

4 yo/1974: Overdose on penicillin (mislabeled to give me two teaspoons an hour instead of one teaspoon every two hours), have an allergic reaction. Spend a couple days in the hospital having my tonsils out. Play ‘army’, ‘cops & robbers’, and ‘cowboys & indians’ in the neighborhood, all basically the same game. Around here, and over the next couple of years, SWAT, CHiPS, Barney Miller, Mash, and the like are on TV and I watch them.

5 yo/1975/kindergarden: Bret gets bronchitis, is in an oxygen tent for a week. My friend Danny gets called the ‘n-word’ in kindergarden. Danny lives kitty-corner across the street from me, and had been adopted by a white family. I stick by him and try to cheer him up after the incident. Begin phonetics. First and only bee-sting. Get involuntarily kissed at school. Catch chicken pox as a result. I remember Roots being on TV, but I don’t remember if it was ’75 or ’76. I didn’t completely understand it, but I did watch bits of it. Bret has to sleep with weird shoes on because of pigeon toes. Dress as Superman for Halloween. Mom makes the costume, and borrows an old pair of red tights from the girl next door (which, because of the snow, I have to wear over my courderoys — this didn’t work very well). I get weirdly nervous about wearing ‘girls clothes’.

6 yo/1976/first grade: I realize I want to be a girl. Interracial couple (wife from Botswana) move in next door. During the summer the high-school-aged moron on the other side of us tries to go after Grace with a baseball bat while me and a few friends watch from my porch. Interracial couple move. Get plowed into at school by kid running for his bus. Get a slight concussion, spend a couple days in the hospital, out of school about a week. Learn to ride a bike. Swimming lessons.

7 yo/1977/second grade: Big year — Get glasses, see Tutankhamen exhibit and Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. See Flash Gordon serials on TV. See Star Wars. More swimming lessons. Win 2nd place in the district in the pinewood derby. I read my very first ‘real’ book on my own (a scholastic book, “The Disappearance of Mr. Allen”). In my first fight. I’m winning when we’re split up by an adult on the playground. Nobody is hurt. I think this is also the year I first remember a true depressive episode — I know it happened in Michigan, and I know I had my Micronauts when it happened.

8 yo/1978/third grade: Begin reading in earnest. Bret in kindergarden. Teacher ruins me for life by teaching us to not trust my memory, and always write out my math longhand.
We move from the UP of Michigan to Moorhead, MN. First memories of seeing Star Trek (the episode with ‘Lurch’ sticks in my head for some reason).

9 yo/1979/fourth grade: Picked on and teased as the new kid and for being a ‘brain’. Reading at a nearly adult level (about a book a day for ‘young adult books’, two or three for an older audience – these books include Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll, even), including the Hobbit. Start LotR, but don’t finish it. First exposure to computers. Get to be in the STEP program midyear, once they realize I’m qualified. First exposure to Native American issues (although I know about them, as the Lake Place is fairly close to a Reservation). Learn about the Tassaday people in the Phillipines. Learn about optics and refraction. Start Drawing. Get in trouble when someone dares me to explain where babies come from and I explain about sperm, eggs, and fertilization. The Martian Chronicles miniseries is on TV, and I see parts of it. Read the book to fill in the bits I missed. Learn how to read maps, compasses, and how Orienteering works. Read most of H.G. Wells stories, including War of the Worlds. Learn about the existence of Sex Change operations. I’m in my second fight, which I do not win, and in fact run away from in tears, while my tormenter laughs at me.

10 yo/1980/fifth grade: Read the LotR. Take an Applesoft Basic programming class in summer school. Read Huckleberry Finn. Logic Problems in STEP. First exposure to Dr. Who (in novelized form). Play Dromio of Ephasus in a version of The Comedy of Errors in STEP. Know a guy who gets into trouble for bringing one of his Dad’s Playboys to school. Played intramural soccer terribly, but had fun anyway. First ‘m-word’ experience.

11 yo/1981/sixth grade: D&D. Frequent access to an apple II at school, begin programming in earnest, trying to write our own game. Realize that I read to avoid difficult emotional situations and depression. This doesn’t do me much good from a practical point of view. Join the School Crossing Guards, use the powers thereto appertaining to break up fights by intimidating them with my semi-official status. Several refugee families from Southeast Asia settle in Moorhead, we have several in my class. See the Blues Brothers on HBO at a friends. We get our dog, Betsy. Read Watership Down.

12/1982/7th grade (jr. hs) Lots more computer use, including Ultima II and the like. More getting picked on. Start learning to play the Oboe. Play Humpty Dumpty in a school play of Alice in Wonderland. See First Blood and Bladerunner at a sleepover. Grandma passes away from colon cancer. Learn to sew and cook. Also take shop. By this point I really hate gym. I’m usually second to last or last picked.

13/1983/8th grade: Move to Nevada mid-year. Get our first computer, Apple IIe. Read Black Like Me. Have friends with more diverse hardware (Commodores, IBM compatibles, and so forth). First actual conscious cross dressing, mostly a few skirts mom is storing in my closet because of a lack of closet space in our NV house. No lock on the door to my room, so I prop up my chair under the doorknob to keep anybody from discovering me. I remember lots of WW II in school in Nevada. Also, took an ‘acting’ class (as ‘acting’ as you can get in Jr. High, I suppose).

14/1984/9th grade: Algebra. See the video about the liberation of Auschwitz that I keep yapping about. Also get introduced to (effectively) comparitive religion covering Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. First exposure to gay people (although most are closeted and I’m a bit thick about it). Attend exactly one Debate tournament, and really enjoy it. Biology class, with frog dissection. See the ‘risque’ version of Romeo & Juliet. Get picked on a lot less, as I’ve mostly learned how to handle bullies so that I’m not a target. We get a 300 baud modem for the Apple. Have jewish friends that I’m aware of (that is, I was aware that judaism existed previously, but I didn’t know anybody who had identified themselves as jewish). Confirmed as a Lutheran (delayed ’cause we moved around a whole bunch).

15/1985/10th grade: More debate. Make ‘Senior’ in both individual events and debate. More algebra. Chemistry class. Take typing, too. Debate group contains a wide mix of religious attitudes (ranging from carrying a bible around to class to the athiests). Effectively agnostic at this point, although it’s been moving in that direction for years. First friends who smoke (cigarettes). Shuttle explodes when I’m home alone, sick.

16/1986/11th grade: More debate. Trig and precalc. Physics class. More computer programming classes, Pascal this time. I win a scientific pocket calculator for having the highest score on a standardized physics test in our school, and get to sit in on a lecture about Supernova 1987A, which is pretty cool. We move to Idaho. Learn to drive. First exposure to formalized logic. Existentialism and other philosophical things hit around here, too. Get to learn some SCUBA in a pool, as well as learn a bunch about electron microscopes and whatnot at a special “brainiac summer class” at UNR.

17/1987/12th grade: New kid again. Make friends, but don’t have much fun. Programming class uses IBM computers. First real experience using one on a nearly daily basis. First real exposure to Mormonism (I knew some Mormons in Nevada, but Idaho is different). Calculus, more chemistry. Read Crime and Punishment. Work at Shop-Ko during the summer. Get a National Merit Scholarship.

18/1988/frosh: Start at WU. New kid again. Get a 286 with a 20 MB HD for HS graduation. Room with a friend from HS in Nevada the first year, which is…ahem, interesting. First girlfriend, technically, although we never actually kiss. She broke up with me in a note. Calculus, ‘real’ programming on the PR1ME, again in pascal. Briefly consider trying a triple major (physics/math/computers), but rapidly realize that this is insane. Meet Dagny. Work on an assembly line at HP during the summer. First real exposure to people drinking around me. Not particularly fun. Vonnegut speaks at WU, which is pretty darn keen. See the theater departments production of Cloud 9, where several female characters are played by men, and vice versa.

19/1989/soph: Meet Andrew Cronk. Kris Gates is in my philosophy class taught by Moss. Linear Algebra. More physics. Actually kiss a girl this year. Took Japanese for no apparent reason for a semester. More roommate issues. My roommate from freshman year comes out as gay, to nobody’s surprise. Matt Long, also from our HS in NV is a freshman this year. I discover he’s also gay (I told you I was thick).

20/1990/junior: Get my first car. Move into a single, meet JD. Abstract Algebra. Get elected floor representative in the dorm, probably because nobody else actually bothers. JD takes up smoking a pipe because he’s dumb, and he with his pipe and Andrew with his clove cigarettes wander around pompously smoking and acting cool.

21/1991/senior: Move into off campus apartments, still in a single. Do not take Arnika and Tara up on their innocent offer to cross-dress me because there’s some CD party going on at the elk’s next door — I’m freaked out by it, in fact, because I’m afraid someone knows I want to be a girl. Coincidentally, first time wearing pantyhose…

I dunno if this is actually interesting to anybody. I was exposed to racial discrimination and hatred at about five or six. I was reading adult fiction with killing, sex, and aliens with weird sexuality and biology in fourth grade at the age of 9. I read Huckleberry Finn, which deals with slavery and whatnot when I was 10. I knew people who were gay (and despite my obtuseness, I did know *some* of them were gay) and who were of widely different religious faiths by the time I was in high school.

I know I was a conscious, thinking, empathetic person by the time I was five, because I had empathy (ie, non-egotism-driven) feelings for Danny in kindergarden. And I remember always trying to take care of my brother right from the moment he was born (I was three). That was My Job as an older sibling.



On 04 February 2004 (12:54 PM),
Dana said:

Dang, two additions.

In 2nd grade, my teacher’s son was killed in a motorcycle accident, and we had a sub for the last third of a year or so.

In 3rd grade, there was a solar eclipse, and I remember showing everybody in class how to make a simple pinhole viewer with a couple of index cards.



On 04 February 2004 (01:12 PM),
J.D. said:

Paul said: I don’t understand your unwillingness to read the bible with the kid who asked. Can I assume that you weren’t going to be as entertained reading those stories as you would have been reading Dr. Seuss and therefore you didn’t follow through with the request? I would be suprised to find out that the subject matter of the story affected your decision to read the story or not.

No, I chose not to read the Bible stories (not the Bible itself) out of principle. Harrison is exposed to Bible stories constantly, believes them to be true, and he doesn’t need me to read them to him in order to further his Christian education. Too, doing so might convey to him that I believe them. While I’m certainly not trying to make him understand that I don’t believe them, I don’t want to give him a false impression, either. Totally avoiding the issue seems like a solution that ought to be acceptable to all parties. I do condone cats, so I’m happy to read The Cat Club to him. 🙂



On 04 February 2004 (01:36 PM),
dowingba said:

I don’t believe in cats, personally.



On 04 February 2004 (02:40 PM),
Paul said:

I am suprised, as I said I would be. Harrison is too young to understand the complexities of your belief system, but he is old enough to understand that he can assume you condone the principles embedded in the bible to be your principles because you read the words to him? You appear to be subvertly proselytizing to Harrison by not enjoying the words on a printed page with him. Isn’t the power of the truth best identified when bright to the light of day or at least verbalized in a story between JD and Harrison? For god’s sake JD, read the kid the story he enjoys and don’t foist the false idol of a cat upon him!

I love the cult of JD.



On 04 February 2004 (02:56 PM),
Kris said:

Paul, in my mind the difference is this: Harrison (5) and Emma (3) can clearly understand the concept of “pretend”. They know Spiderman is pretend and they are amused by the idea that the cats are having their cat-friends over for a spaghetti party because they know that that, too, is just pretend. They know real cats don’t cook spaghetti. However, in Sunday school, the Bible stories are not presented as part of a myth or even as allegory; they are presented as truth. That’s fine with me; it’s up to their parents to decide when to expose H&E to alternative truths. But it is my choice to read or not read those stories as I see fit. I choose not to read the Berenstein Bears (or however you spell it), too (because I’ve always thought them dumb). The kids deal with my preferences just as I deal with theirs. There are plenty of books we all enjoy to quibble over a few.



On 04 February 2004 (02:59 PM),
J.D. said:

Harrison is not old enough to understand whether or not I condone his belief system by reading Bible stories to him. He is old enough to remember whether or not I’ve read them to him, though, and one day will be old enough to examine these memories with respect to a more complex examination of religious belief. Trust me: my decision is not capricious. Besides, isn’t it better to lead him to the Cult of J.D. through felinity?

Facts about The Cult of J.D.

Deity: Me.
Sacred food: Kalamata olive.
Sacred music: “Bad” by U2.
Sacred book: Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier.
Sacred film: Amelie.
Sacred day: March 25th.
Sacred rituals: daily writing, daily reading (but not Bible stories!), breaking bread with friends, yo-yo dieting, standing in line for films, discussing geeky topics ad nauseum, sitting on a log in the middle of the forest.
Sacred motto: “why do today what can be put off until tomorrow”.
Sacred scriptures: Timecube!
Sacred commandments: thou shalt not shop at big chain stores that invade your town; thou shalt not read Bible stories to children; thou shalt love your cat; thou shalt relax; thou shalt spend $50 for a bottle of whiskey but refuse to spend more than $20 for any one piece of clothing; thou shalt forgive all transgressions; thou shalt maintain contact, yada yada yada.

The cult of J.D. welcomes all members.

(And what will be really amusing is if this weblog is still operational four years from now (or six or eight), and Harrison rummages through it to stumble upon this post.)



On 04 February 2004 (03:53 PM),
Lynn said:

I’m with you on this, JD. Reading Bible stories with someone when you don’t agree with that belief system is hypocritical. He may not understand it now, but someday when Harrison is old enough to understand your beliefs, he will look back and realize why you chose not to read those books. I actually don’t see why this is such a difficult concept to understand? Just because it involves the sensitive subject of the Bible? What if it had to do with hunting, or war, and you didn’t believe in those activities? I’m sure others would think it fine to choose not to read those books.



On 04 February 2004 (04:29 PM),
Tammy said:

I don’t see what the big deal is about JD not reading Bible stories to the kids. Actually he should be applauded for this. If he believes the Bible stories to be fables of no value then why should he read them? I wouldn’t read Jehovahs Witness literature or the Book of Mormon to my kids because I think they’re wrong. I stand on the same principle as JD. The only difference between us is that my beliefs are right and his are wrong! 🙂 (love ya JD)



On 04 February 2004 (05:47 PM),
Aimee said:

[Further Dana-Aimee coincidence: I played Maud in the Luther College production of Cloud 9 (nearly ten years after you saw it); Joel played Harry Bagley in the same show … You’re one of the few people I know who has mentioned that show in casual conversation (in this case, auto-bio opportunity). Nonetheless, incredibly significant piece of theatre – I highly recommend it to anyone who’d enjoy upsetting their teacups.]



On 04 February 2004 (06:36 PM),
Jennifer (Harrison’s Mom) said:

I feel compelled to respond. If you must know the Truth. Jd never actually reads stories to our kids. Yes, he opens up a book and begins with the first few written words. Then he adds a few of his own ideas, substitutes names and places for those of his own choosing, and sometimes reaches the end of the story (or not) with the same general plot line or theme. You can see why it would be nearly impossible for him to read a Bible story using this technique. The kids usually get frustrated with Jd’s rendition of their favorite story gone askew and respond by jumping on him… but they love him anyway.



On 04 February 2004 (07:34 PM),
Dana said:

I think it sounds like someone needs to write some children’s books…



On 04 February 2004 (08:09 PM),
Drew said:

As I go dottering off into middle age, I find myself still occasionally pompous and smoking – usually in J.D’s vicinity. Guilty as charged, madam! J.D. is probably a bad influence on me, but I like him anyway. I’d say more, but I’m busy writing Wizardry I in J#.



On 08 February 2004 (04:45 PM),
J.D. Roth said:

This weblog entry, at the always great Fussy, seems relevant to this disucssion.

Read More →

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