5&1/2 Minute Hallway

My tastes in books, art or music tend to trend towards the content hinting at the inexplicable.  Either there is a larger and more fantastic mystery in the story or there is a narrative that is... disconcerting in the picture or there is a heart of sadness in the songs respectively.  Some of my favorite things are media that point to something larger.  Maybe it will be explained but I am perfectly happy 90% of the time if it is not.

One of my favorite books is called House of  Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski.  A short synopsis: The narrator receives a trunk full of papers from an old man, Zampano, which tell the tale of a family that moves into a house that, after a time starts to change.  The physical dimensions of the house grow, hallways appear along with mysterious doors.  The father of the family is a film maker and he documents the events.  The narrator finds records of these, but nothing physical.  It points towards being elaborate fiction but it has the side effect of making him paranoid beyond belief.  The end of the book leaves it so that the events either were real and forgotten or completely made up by a mad old man.

The only reason this book came into my radar is thanks to his sister, Poe.  Her album Haunted was written as a companion to his book... or vice versa and both were in a sense made to deal with the passing of their father.  Both are... lonely and larger than they seem.  There are hints towards sadness and loss and coming to terms with those feelings in both.  Moreover they have that feeling of mystery.

Of course the album has to be considered in a different way.  Not all songs fit the narrative, this is not a rock opera or a concept album.  Songs like Not a Virgin, Control or Lemon Meringue don't provide the same atmosphere but act as catharsis.  Control in particular is a good song to play quite loud as you... I dunno, flip off an old job or something.

Now if she could only release a new album, its only been 14 (!) years since the last one.

Those who can't, critique.

Art.  I think by now if you read this or if you know me in Meatspace know that I love it in just about every shape and form.  My most favorite art though has to be painting.  Any medium, most subjects and most movements are like catnip.  I love to see them and try to figure out how some people painted what they did and why.

That in mind I think I will take this time to critique a fairly well known artist, though he is not known primarily for his paintings.

George W. Bush.

43rd president of the USA, a first lieutenant in the national guard and staunch republican.  I didn't like him as a president as his policies seemed to favor rich friends over the rest of the country.  I didn't think we should have attacked Iraq and I find it offensive that Bin Laden wasn't caught during his run as president.  However I think it is good that he is pursuing art.  Undoubtedly he has a lot on his mind and painting is a grand way to relieve some stress.

Recently he reveled a portrait of himself and his father.

Not as bad as it might've been.

Art, at it's best should allow us for reflection in ourselves.  I look at this painting and I see mistakes that I have made in the past.  The blotch of white, probably completely unpainted canvas in Sr's coat.  Some sloppy color changes and thickness issues that take a lot of practice to really control.  I see my errors in this picture, a common struggle shared by novice artists. 

Some people may be turned off by the roughness of the painting.  Completely understandable. There are some bad colors in here that muddy the image.  But there are elements there that show he has improved since his Putin painting.  His forms are more defined and he is trying to push light and dark contrast.  Something that I have issues with.

It shows promise that with a lot of practice he, like anyone who practices, will get better, but I don't like the picture.  I'm certain there are people who do, I'm not one of them but I would not tell him to stop if I had the chance.

Unexpected finds.

We all love it when we find something new.  New to us, new to the world, sparkling and ready for us to consume.  These last few weeks have had a couple of discoveries that have been super pleasant and I'd like to share.

Firstly, and I've said this on my FB, I've apparently inherited some frying skill from my Scottish ancestors.  I've pulled off fried chicken and taqitos just by tossing what I feel would be tasty together and poof, exceptionally tasty but very bad for me foods.  Two things I've decided though, I need to invest in new tongs for removing said fried thingys and I need a gas stove.  Better heat control would equal better foods.

Nextly I've run across a couple of bands/songs that have added some good color to my playlists.
Aubrey Debauchery & The Puke Boots have a song called Whiskey Breath which is peppy.
BABYMETAL is a J-pop meets deathmetal group and they have infiltrated my Good Things playlist with a song called Doki Doki ☆ Morning as well as one called Gimme Chocolate!!  Good things.

I am hoping to work more on projects that I can post here and elsewhere.  I've set something up with The Wife where we should be able to do that easier.  We shall see, I am hopeful.

Utah, not as oppressive as it used to be.

Well, not all of Utah anyway.

I am writing of course about the Supreme Courts non-action regarding the appeal our local government tossed against the ruling that decided gay marriage bans were unconstitutional.  Our AG and Governor fumbled about quite badly following that decision as our AG was being arrested for bribery or somesuch.  It has been... interesting to say the least.

With the Court deciding not even to look at the appeal it essentially means that those that were married on Dec. 20th are still married, legally and binding as any other contract.  (side note, my wife and I also have a Dec. 20th anniversary.  It will be interesting to try and get a dinner date now).  Utah, specifically Salt Lake City has been more LGBTQ friendly in the past decade and this ruling helps a couple of couples I know feel better about life in general.  Good times.

It is interesting though, Its been like a day since it has become fully legal and I don't feel a need to leave my family and gay marry someone.  It's like I was being lied to when some prominent pontificators proclaimed profusely persistent platters of perpetual peril if something like this happened.

The pros and cons of a snuggly child.

Our first child, The Boy, was not a particularly snuggly baby.  He was fine in a seat or a crib or whatever and though he did grump at times he was much more at home on his lonesome.  This may be due to the fact that at the time The Wife was going to school and driving 80 miles a day.  As such he was not held as much as we would've liked.  You wouldn't know it now though, he is a hug monster and full of crazy energy.

The Girl though, she is already showing signs of being as different from her brother as she can be.  She is a snugglebug of the highest caliber.  The wife and I have both held her for HOURS while we play our different console games.  Wife is working through Skyrim and I am going through Dragon Age Origins all the while holding this little bean in our arms that will certain let you know that she does not like being put down.

A bit of grand news to finish with.
The Girl had a blanket that we first swaddled her in, blue with stars on one side and sleeping animals in nightcaps on the other.  Unfortunately we only had it for three days.  We were heading to The Wife's family home to celebrate a birthday and Wife didn't tuck the blankie in with the baby or secure it in her purse.  We are both tired so don't notice that the blankie went AWOL until about two hours after we leave.  When we got back I scoured the parking at our apartment, I looked in the rubbish bins, I walk around the block to see if I can find this blankie.  It was gone.

So that evening I put up notes in our apartment's common areas with my phone number but no one responds and weeks go by with no word.  I noticed on Friday coming home that the note was missing from the board and I assumed that someone had taken it down to make room for another notice.  It happens, I sigh and move on.  That Saturday morning I get a call, someone found the blankie!  They have had it for a while and apparently just saw the notice.   We had hoped that whomever ended up with the blanket was happy with it but we had lost hope of it coming back.  Sometimes the Universe gives you a little back.

Music, who knew?

I've made a discovery about The Girl which has been successful in no less than three occasions now.  She apparently likes Electro Swing music.  For those not in the know, Electro Swing is a genre of music that combines modern electronic music and swing music.  Duh.  It is pretty enjoyable and some of the songs/bands that I've been turned onto have become staples in my playlists.

Anyhow, I was up late one night with The Girl who was fussing and crying.  I set her in her swing so I could do some dishes, it was 2 am, what else would I be doing?  Anyhow I know that music helps me calm down so I figured I would try with her.  Now, most of my saved playlists on Spotify have less than.... family friendly fare on rotation so I chose my Electroswing playlist.  It took her a moment to quiet down enough to actually hear the music but once she did her eyes opened and she went silent.  In less than ten minutes she was asleep.

It doesn't work every time, clearly more tests will need to be run but it seems like our wee Boo likes my music.  Good, goooooooood.

Duality

I have a problem sometimes with optimism.  Generally I am able to stay fairly optimistic, as a whole, while things may look down.  The best allegory I can think of would be in the Battlestar Galactica reboot where they keep searching for Earth, suffer through a bunch a crap and then they say 'screw it, good enough!'  That is my outlook at times, like now.

At heart I think though I am a Stoic, not the unemotional type but trying to find inner calm through outer control.  The old philosophy of it is something that I can relate to.  From Wikipedia:

"A distinctive feature of Stoicism is its cosmopolitanism: All people are manifestations of the one universal spirit and should, according to the Stoics, live in brotherly love and readily help one another. In the Discourses, Epictetus comments on man's relationship with the world: "Each human being is primarily a citizen of his own commonwealth; but he is also a member of the great city of gods and men, whereof the city political is only a copy."^[30] This sentiment echoes that of Diogenes of Sinope, who said "I am not an Athenian or a Corinthian, but a citizen of the world."^[31]"

That echos quite nicely to me and it is something that I try to bring to my life though sometimes I fail, miserably.

I get angry, as we all do from time to time, but I get a lot more angry than I let on.  Rarely to the point of seeking to do actual harm to a person for whatever they'd done but more than once I've broken something in a pure red rage and felt quite fine with it.  Case in point, I've done this to my hand and in truth, I don't really regret it.  It still hurts sometimes but it serves as a reminder of a last resort and is as such useful.

I think I've babbled enough.

A moment,

I don't know sometimes what to make of the world.

Over the weekend a young black man was shot by the local police, several times.  From behind.  According to what I read there are witnesses that state the man was running away from the police.  He was also cosplaying at the time and part of his costume was a dummy sword.  Meanwhile there are white old dudes going around with guns openly carried and complaining quite loudly about the people that are uncomfortable with them doing so.

As I grow older I find that I have a larger aversion to guns than I used to have.  I think it is due to shootings like the one above.  Someone, regardless of whatever circumstances there are, decided that the easiest way to end it was with one or several bullets.  Not a taser or pepper spray, handcuffs or backup.  Just lead.  I don't have words for how exactly I feel about this.

In which we continue to wait.

My birthday has come and gone and still no baby.  I was hoping that she would be born on that day but alas and alack, no go.  The Wife and I have started to resign ourselves to the fact that despite all of the fun practice contractions, The Girl will not be showing up any time soon.  The Wife and I have developed the stares that prisoners give each other.  We are resigned to a fate we cannot change.

The Birthday was good though.  I am now 31, but care very little about the number. I think it is slightly more significant that the light from 61 Ursae Majoris will be reaching us very soon.  According to wikipedia we are 31.1 ish lightyears from that star meaning that in something like 1.2 months light from it from when I was born will reach us.  Memory Alpha tells us that the NX-01 was sent to investigate the star close up and one of the planets in the system is named for Johnathan Archer, Archer IV.

I like measuring time in Light Travel time.  

And now I am a potato.

We are still on Babywatch.  The top favorite for a replacement word for F**K is Braxton-Higgs.  At this point, from a non-incubator perspective, it is kind of like watching a Wife size pot of water come to a boil.  It takes forever, you can easily burn yourself and just when you think you get to the point where you can cook your food the stove explodes because you have placed an irresponsible amount of hot water on a tiny stove.

What was I saying?  Oh yeah, FRUSTRATION.  As bad as the waiting is for me, it is much worse on The Wife.  I at least don't have a wee thing inside of me, wriggling about and keeping me awake, having to use the bathroom and punching me intestines/bones.  I joke with my wife that she does not have patience at the best of times but that's not true.  Right now what she is doing I'm not certain I could do.  The little sleep, the changes in taste and smells.  The aches and discomfort that only seem to subside but never leave.  I think I would be driven mad.

Again, just being on the outside of the process is frustrating.  I can't control when the baby comes or how smoothly it can go.  I can't know beforehand if something I do will set off a pregnancy related discomfort with my wife.  The lack of control is hard.  Whenever The Girl comes it will be a little easier.  I will be able to hold her and let my wife rest.  I will be able to feed her or give some quiet time.  I know how to handle babies now and even though less sleep and more stress are a certainty I welcome it.  Heck, I'm even looking forward to it.

Where I live.

Utah is a place that, sometimes rightly so, is the butt of many jokes.  The Simpsons where Bart challenges Millhouse, "Race you to Utah".  Broken Arrow where they boast about if they ever go to war with Utah.  Yadda yadda yadda.  Point is Utah gets more pokes than say.... Montana or Idaho.  That being said there are some very cool things here that I love.

Did you ever see the TV movie of The Stand?  Most of what wasn't shot in Vegas was done here.  The first public meeting that they hold in "Bolder" in the third episode is the Union Pacific building.  An absolutely stunning building that is now part of "The Gateway", a mall in the center of the city that hosts our St Patrick's Day parade.  The airbase that Trash wrecks is actually the Wendover Airfield close to the Salt Flats.

Remember The Sandlot?  The actual sandlot is located a couple of blocks from my gramma's house.  Down south a ways is the pool and park where they filmed the carnival and pool scene, you know the one.  My dad was even cut from the movie.  True story.

The iconic dog chase scene, where Benny outruns Herc causing all kinds of mayhem, well I know for a fact that they filmed much more than they ended up using.  It happens in movies, of course it does but I am sad that me da was cut from this one.  Anyhow, my dad in his prime was one of the most recognizable faces in the Western Scottish Pipe Band Association.  A Drum Major.  He and the band he was working with at the time, I believe it was the Salt Lake Scotts were hired to be extras during filming on that scene.  The dog and Benny were to run through them and they were all to fall or scatter or whatever.  Less than five seconds of screen time really.  One of the drummers damaged his instrument during the filming, dented it all up.

All the while I'm sitting there under a tree, watching all these people make a big fuss over lights and cameras.  I petted a big dog and played with some kids.  Every so often the dog would be moved to go to the cameras and then come back.  Once the dog came back a little scuffed up.  Apparently the dog trainer tumbled and so the dog thought to do the same.  I petted him and helped give him water.  I had no idea that the kids I played with or the dog I sat with under the tree were the stars of the movie.  All I knew at the time was my dad was doing a job with his band and it would help us go to Disneyland.

It kind of salts my butter though.  They filmed the cake part of that scene the same day.  That made it in but me da didn't.

I've gotten off on a tangent so I guess I will end here.  I'll talk more on Utah later.

It feels like summer again, but not in a good way.

After a while, and I am sure that anyone who writes or blogs in a non professional fashion can agree on this, life gets in the way and your ability or desire to blabber on teh interwebs takes a nosedive.  I have obviously not written as much as I'd like and I do feel bad about that.

The Girl gets closer.  She kicks and wiggles and squiggles and we wait.  OOOooooooh how we wait.  Fortunately at this writing we have 2 days and 4 hours to go have her where we would like.  In no time flat we will be on the home stretch and we will see what happens to my productivity then!

Working on two or three different projects now.  One I am thinking would be best done in water colors, one in acrylic and the other/s digitally.  I will keep at them even after The Girl comes.  I have too.  I want to make good things for my family. 

A father's day of sorts.

Hullo.

Radio silence has been broken.  It was initiated mostly because the last week or so have been rather... busy? There really is no excuse that would be adequate or sound like anything other than a "whoops" so I won't insult your intelligence.

I had the rather immense pleasure this last Friday (the 4th) to spend the day with my son and to give my wife a much needed day of rest.  I hear that she watched a lot of stuff and napped, so that was a success.  We went to a park that we had never played in before.  It had large shades covering the play area so we could romp in the 100+ degree day without getting a sunburn.  Plenty of water was had by all.  I would like to go back to this park because it had a nice stream with a duck family and several more play areas and climbing walls.

Its been recently where I've started to see glimpses of the man my child might become.  Hints in his face, small mannerisms that he has picked up from family.  The apparent never ending stretching of his limbs.

He will be four in less than two weeks.  He will have a sibling in less than ten.

I am only rarely scared of what might happen with them.

However it is days like the 4th that give me comfort.  We played, we watched a fun movie together (Mr Peabody and Sherman), we ate and talked and played some more.  I think that even if I go early then he has something to remember me by, something pleasant.  Days like today as well.  As soon as I got home he insisted that Mommy and I go swimming with him.  Afterwords I made dinner and we tucked Mommy into bed before I tucked him in.  He is a good boy.  A good helper.  In him I understand my parents more.  What they went through to get me to where I am.

It's days like these that keep me going.  

And one other thing...

The little spud is probably going to be an August baby, just like me, my wife, da, sis, unc and a few others.  My Mom has to put up with so many Leos.

Gonna Spawn

I found out the other day that I, of all the people in the world, will be a daddy before too long.  I have gone through just about every emotion one would expect a soon to be father to go through; Joy, dizzyness, excitement, terror, those sorts, but through all of this I have felt like it is the right time, the right thing to happen.  

Same thing happened when I asked my wife to marry me, when we said I do, nothing said this is a no no.  It's comforting to have a situation like that.  Where you might be scared out of your wits, but your mind is confident about the outcome or the situation.  I imagine its what people who have religion feel, but I don't know about that.