Cool Yule

B2 loved that I'd put up the tree. He had run right up to it, and was just thrilled. He gushed about how the Christmas tree was his favorite part of the holiday, and went about rearranging some of the decorations on the tree. I loved seeing him so stoked about it. He would periodically go on about it, just how much he loved it. We set up the boys' GeoTrax train around the base of the tree, too, which B2 enjoyed, too.

This Christmas will be much better than last year's, thankfully, although I'm still being very prudent about what to get the boys, trying to pick things that they'll really want, use, and enjoy. There's nothing worse than facing some "must-have" toy that they play with for about 15 minutes. On the bright side, since we never watch commercial television anymore, the boys lack that hardwired consumerist instinct so many kids cultivate. So, I have it comparatively easy.

As ever the Christmas commando, I pride myself on being able to get gifts into the apartment without the boys seeing -- Exene already had B2 spot a present she'd bought; I don't know how she talked her way out of him tearing into that one! What amuses me is that, thanks to my good hiding places, neither boys are the wiser for it -- B1 would never think of doing it, because he's so honorable; and B2 doesn't suspect that I've got various niches and hidey-holes for presents. If he knew where they were, he'd totally ferret them out! This is the kid who, at 3 years of age, would methodically pull a chair into the kitchen, climb atop it, and then climb atop the sink in an effort to get something sequestered atop the fridge.

I'm figuring on four gifts per boy -- I think that's more than sufficient. And that doesn't count anything I put in their stockings, which are hanging from the windows, so Santa can see'em -- they loved that, too. B2 was already grilling me about a present, like "Will you get this, or will Santa?" and I said "I don't know, yet. We'll see."

Hugo (2011)

I saw Martin Scorsese's "Hugo" last night, after work. I'm a big fan of his, love his directing style, so I saw this one with much anticipation, and was disappointed -- not in his shooting of it. It's compellingly shot, of course, as I would expect from Scorsese, who can probably shoot movies in his sleep at this point. But I found the story lacking. Without wanting to go into spoilers per se, the movie is sort of deceptive -- despite the title, the title character really isn't the main driver of anything, so much as he's the catalyst. The movie is really about another character, and the boy is just a means of delivering some kind of creative absolution to that other character. I found the characterizations to be lacking, and the tone to be strongly sentimental and nostalgic, and Scorsese's own intense love of film-making to derail the story, itself. If it wanted to be a movie about movies, it needed to be that -- but there are other things thrown into the mix, and the result is that the movie doesn't convince or persuade -- at least it didn't do that with me (I say that because some folks applauded when it was over). In terms of the shooting of the movie, it was fine -- but in terms of the story, it was wanting.

They likely crafted the story of this cuter, cornflower-eyed waif boy in the train station to sell the real story, which was less marketable -- namely, this old film director who has, for some reason, lost his will to create movies. Again, because of the lack of deep characterization, the whole exercise felt less than convincing.

The movie will likely coast to some kind of Oscar nominations, but it's likely simply because of Scorsese's justified status as one of America's Last Great Moviemakers. It didn't work for me, however -- I didn't feel it exceeded the sum of its parts.

Holidays

Got the tree up last night. I love Christmas trees. The boys will love seeing it when they finally return, of course, they'll be wondering where the presents are. All in good time. I'm tickled that both boys still believe in Santa, and that I've been able to successfully carry out Santa operations in my apartment without the boys being the wiser. Daddy the Christmas commando!

Fort

I made a nice fort for the boys in their room, having cleared out the storage space where the Christmas decorations boxes have been. I made a nice fort in the corner of their room. They are loving it, are both in there. Forts are always fun!

Exene's family is in town, doing their usual "Thanksgiving for Exene" thing they do, where they drive up, cook the bejeebers out of a pile of food, watch the boys, and Exene partakes of it and then goes running. The boys'll at least enjoy seeing their relatives, and Exene will enjoy the repast that they serve up for her.

Me, I think I'll catch "Hugo" at some point. I work tomorrow, so I don't have a superlong weekend or anything.

Pepper Pike

I admit I am amused about the whole "Cop Casually Pepper Spraying Everything" meme that cropped up in reaction to the UC Davis debacle. There's your 15 minutes of fame (or infamy), Slick. Some people are known for inventing things, or creating works of art, or writing, or any number of other things; you're known for casually pepperspraying protesters in the face (I wonder if he went to Pepperdine?)....

Umbrella Man

Having forgotten my umbrella today, and, correspondingly, getting spritzed with rain (thankfully wearing my squall jacket, so only my slacks and shoes got reasonably wet), I saw this short film in the NYT, on this 48th anniversary of the JFK assassination...

The Umbrella Man

Which is pretty good, worth a watch!

Randroids. *scoff*

Reading an article about something else, I saw this good piece on Ayn Rand from a few years ago...

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2009/11/how_ayn_rand_became_an_american_icon.single.html

Ayn Rand is one of America's great mysteries. She was an amphetamine-addicted author of sub-Dan Brown potboilers, who in her spare time wrote lavish torrents of praise for serial killers and the Bernie Madoff-style embezzlers of her day. She opposed democracy on the grounds that "the masses"—her readers—were "lice" and "parasites" who scarcely deserved to live. Yet she remains one of the most popular writers in the United States, still selling 800,000 books a year from beyond the grave.

She was nuts, too, apparently...

Her diaries from that time, while she worked as a receptionist and an extra, lay out the Nietzschean mentality that underpins all her later writings. The newspapers were filled for months with stories about serial killer called William Hickman, who kidnapped a 12-year-old girl called Marion Parker from her junior high school, raped her, and dismembered her body, which he sent mockingly to the police in pieces. Rand wrote great stretches of praise for him, saying he represented "the amazing picture of a man with no regard whatsoever for all that a society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. A man who really stands alone, in action and in soul. … Other people do not exist for him, and he does not see why they should." She called him "a brilliant, unusual, exceptional boy," shimmering with "immense, explicit egotism." Rand had only one regret: "A strong man can eventually trample society under its feet. That boy [Hickman] was not strong enough."
It's not hard to see this as a kind of political post-traumatic stress disorder. Rand believed the Bolshevik lie that they represented the people, so she wanted to strike back at them—through theft and murder. In a nasty irony, she was copying their tactics. She started to write her first novel, We the Living(1936), and in the early drafts her central character—a crude proxy for Rand herself—says to a Bolshevik: "I loathe your ideals. I admire your methods. If one believes one's right, one shouldn't wait to convince millions of fools, one might just as well force them."

And a manifest authoritarian, too, a cult leader...

Her heroes are a cocktail of extreme self-love and extreme self-pity: They insist they need no one, yet they spend all their time fuming that the masses don't bow down before their manifest superiority.
As her books became mega-sellers, Rand surrounded herself with a tightly policed cult of young people who believed she had found the One Objective Truth about the world. They were required to memorize her novels and slapped down as "imbecilic" and "anti-life" by Rand if they asked questions. One student said: "There was a right kind of music, a right kind of art, a right kind of interior design, a right kind of dancing. There were wrong books which we should not buy."

Rand had become addicted to amphetamines while writing The Fountainhead, and her natural paranoia and aggression were becoming more extreme as they pumped though her veins. Anybody in her circle who disagreed with her was subjected to a show trial in front of the whole group in which they would be required to repent or face expulsion. Her secretary, Barbara Weiss, said: "I came to look on her as a killer of people." The workings of her cult exposed the hollowness of Rand's claims to venerate free thinking and individualism. Her message was, think freely, as long as it leads you into total agreement with me.

A fitting end...

She never really recovered. We all become weak at some point in our lives, so a thinker who despises weakness will end up despising herself. In her 70s Rand found herself dying of lung cancer, after insisting that her followers smoke because it symbolized "man's victory over fire" and the studies showing it caused lung cancer were Communist propaganda. By then she had driven almost everyone away. In 1982, she died alone in her apartment with only a hired nurse at her side. If her philosophy is right—if the only human relationships worth having are based on the exchange of dollars—this was a happy and victorious death. Did even she believe it in the end?

I would say that "Atlas Shrugged" is the "Mein Kampf" of American fascism, truly.

Q101

I haven't regularly listened to radio since, I dunno, 1995 -- that was the last year I remembered hearing anything remotely compelling on the radio. After that point, I increasingly just listened to music on my own, followed my own interests and preferences, bought a lot of CDs. Of course, even that trailed off from about 2005 onward. That, in itself, is kind of curious for me -- I have so many CDs, but as I found fewer and fewer current bands compelling, my music purchases declined, and I just relied on my existing archive of music, stocking up my iTunes to the critical mass of music I needed, which was about 7000 songs. I have the good fortune to work at a job where I can "plug-and-play" and listen to music while I work. But while I listen to music, I don't listen to music radio. There just wasn't anything out there that was interesting enough for me, and the lack of control of the format was perhaps less appealing, after years of iPod and iTunes.

Now I read this article about Q101 being turned from an "alternative" station to news, and I'm very surprised. Q101 was a kind of musical institution in Chicago; it may not have played music that I considered alternative, but you could at least count on it to play rock music -- now it's news? I wonder where all of those orphaned listeners will go for music? Again, it's sort of a weird thing for me, because I haven't regularly listened to radio for over 16 years, but I'm still sad for the demise of a major local player like Q101. And since I'm admittedly no longer a radio listener, I don't even know where those people will go. It's just curious to think about it that way, how alien such an omnipresent medium has become to me (and, likely, so many others).

Walkin'

Walked home from downtown tonight, just because the weather was relatively nice, compared with what it has been. Fun to see downtown light up for the holidays. Of course I snapped a few photographs of window displays and what-not.

Amazing that Thanksgiving is right around the corner, which means Christmas is that much closer. Lordy.

Koff

So far, so good -- just had a sore throat yesterday, but it appears to have mostly abated since then. Hopefully my body fought off the cold. I've been pretty lucky with that the last few years. I had a sneezing fit yesterday, but that was it.

Found $.25 today, so I finally broke the $50 mark on found money for the year! A personal best!

Had conferences for the boys. B2 is rocking kindergarten; he's ahead of where he should be on all things, and is very well-behaved in class. His teacher was really glad to have him, and commented that she'd had B1 last year, and was amazed at how different the boys are, how serious B1 is, relative to his happy-go-lucky baby brother.

B1's teacher had less sanguine stuff to report; B1 is hit-or-miss on his schoolwork -- if he's focused, he rocks it, but sometimes he loses focus and the work suffers. He's particularly off-put by standardized testing. I suspect he's stressing about the time factor involved. So, Exene and I are going to work with B1 independently, help him navigate that stuff.

Scratchy

I am catching a cold, irritatingly enough. I can feel it starting up in my throat. Hopefully, if it's been like the other colds of the past few years, it'll be comparatively mild for me. We'll see. Bleah.

The boys are with Exene the next few days; B2 didn't want to go, hid in the kitchen, crying. I had to pick him up and cajole him, get him transitioned to go to Exene's. They never fight about coming to my place; it's only when they're going to her place that they get down. B1 just  grimly resigns himself to it, while B2 fusses.

I really need to clean the apartment, like top to bottom, front to back. Fall cleaning, I guess. I just want to purge a lot of the toys the boys no longer play with, but which are still around, cluttering their room. And vacuuming the corners, sweeping it up, all of that jazz. I'm going to do that the next few days, since I won't have the boys in the mix.

Weekender

I've had the boys since Wednesday, and they are doing fine, having fun, of course. They haven't once asked "Where's Mommy?" I'm sure they'll be glad to see her when she finally returns (maybe tonight; I asked her, but she wasn't clear on it). But, as ever, I'm keeping everything rolling.

Did I mention that stores over here are starting to sell Graeter's Ice Cream? Wow! I stumbled onto that the other day, couldn't believe it. Of course, it's expensive: $5.49 a pint at Treasure Island (I have to see if they have it at Dominick's). But their Coconut Chocolate Chip and other flavors are fab.

Seeing Graeter's (and things like Great Lakes Brewing Company beers, among others) reinforces just how many Ohioans have fled Ohio for greener pastures. Under the withered hand of a Republican-dominated state government for the last 15+ years, pursuing Republican economic policies, the state has hemorrhaged jobs and population. I'm hoping that enough people are sick of that bullshit to try to turn things around for Ohio, but we'll see. As someone who grew up in Youngstown, I think Youngstowners saw that kind of stuff early -- that is, it appears that the rest of the state is catching up with where Youngstown was decades ago. And, by extension, what Ohio has been experiencing for decades is what the reset of the country has begun to experience from about the point of the housing market crash, onward.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/census/2011-03-09-ohio-census_N.htm

Anyway, the result of this ongoing economic death spiral is that there is an Ohioan "expatriate/refugee" community in Chicago, to the extent that bars give themselves over to Buckeyes fans during the season, and you see a lot of Buckeyes jerseys and Browns jerseys peppered around. Of course, plenty of Miami of Ohio bumper stickers and so forth. There is a bar, too, I think it's called "Reds" or something, that is tailor-made for Reds fans (big shock, right) with Cincy fare at it. Ohio's loss has been Chicago's gain, to be sure (although it looks like Columbus has also benefited from the losses of the other cities in Ohio). It's just weird for me, since I was an early emigrant (1993), when almost nobody from Ohio was in Chicago. Now, they are all over the place.

11/11/11

Of course, I think it's weird that there's a meme of people making wishes at 11:11 on 11/11/11, as if the entire universe bowed to our clocks, time zones, calendars, species, and individual wishes. Lordy. If there's one lesson life on Earth should teach you, it's that The Universe Doesn't Care About You. Not to be a cynical buzzkill, but there is an enormous amount of ego gratification tied up into the idea of a caring universe (and, by extension, an all-knowing, all-seeing, ever-present God). It requires ignoring all the petty cruelties and grandiose outrages that occur daily (I mean, 44 million Americans without health insurance; over 16 million children living in poverty -- how does this fit in with God's master plan?) In all the vastness of space, for the Earth to occupy such a singular and central position is ludicrous. I mean, for us to be a sand grain on a beach would be a promotion, in terms of the scale of the cosmos -- that's for the entire planet, people!

The cosmos doesn't care about us; that's why I think people have to care for each other. I mean, we have so-called Christians who could give two shits about the poor, the weak, and the downtrodden, and who actually think they are avatars and arbiters of morality! And, of course, because I'm an atheist, I'm somehow a bad guy, even though I can see this hypocrisy laid bare.

Wishes won't save you. What can save you is: 1) reason; 2) empathy; 3) action; 4) an open mind; 5) imagination; 6) hope. That'll save you while you're living. Be rational, be compassionate, be industrious, be adaptable, be creative. That will get you out of any jam.

And if you're a believer reading this, thinking "You're wrong, Mr. Atheist Man, only God and magical thinking can save you," I offer a simple proof: All evil (as we choose to see it) stems from the opposite of the 5 things I listed above. Just take the opposites:

1. Reason: Insanity, Ignorance, and Stupidity
2. Empathy: Cruelty, Ruthlessness
3. Action: Laziness
4. Open mind: Closed mind
5. Imagination: Lack of vision
6. Hope: Despair

Show me an insane, ignorant, stupid, cruel, lazy, close-minded, blinkered, despairing person, and I'll show you somebody who is not a good or worthwhile spirit, but somebody who is fucking evil -- or at best, somebody who is far from being an exemplary human being. And that person is likely to believe in magical thinking, and in wishes (and their dowdy, prim cousin, prayer). They can blow their qualms with atheism and atheists out their pious asses.

Sorry if this is more strident than you're used to seeing, but I got pissed off today when I saw that whooping cough is coming back, as is measles. There's an outbreak of it in McHenry County, one of the staunch, Republican "collar counties" around Chicago. *golf applause* Nice going, idiots -- you know why this is happening? Because you people aren't vaccinating your kids. You God-fearing, corporal punishment-loving, evolution-rejecting, science-loathing, atheist-fearing, hyperpartisan dolts -- you are endangering your kids, and you are endangering the rest of society with your ignorance. And equivocators, you can blow it out your asses, too -- me calling out ignorance and intolerance doesn't make me ignorant and intolerant, myself.

Track record of vaccination = good. History and evidence is on its side. Life before vaccination = BAD. Whooping cough = BAD. Measles = BAD. That this argument even has to be made is a testament to the pervasive power of ignorance.

And I say this because, obviously, I understand that a disease has no ideology, it has no faith, it has no politics, it doesn't care. It wasn't sent by a caring, benevolent God to smite thine enemies (or your faithful flock, for that matter); rather, it's an organism that will make you sick, because your life is bound up in your biology -- break enough rules of that biology, and you die (or if a disease breaks those rules for you). Vaccination is a means of using reason to find a way out of the deathtrap of disease, a way of gaming biology's grim calculus in our favor. And you want to reject that? Truly? Based on what? Oh, right, the misguided, evidence-free opinion of a former Playboy Bunny? Yes, magical thinkers, you're endangering us all with your fucking ignorance.

Anyway, enjoy your wishes today. And don't forget, you've got them in the AM and the PM, so there are two opportunities to make your magic wishes! Word them very carefully. And no need to vaccinate your kids, right? God'll sort it all out.

Seriously, that just pisses me off so much. Groundless, baseless, needless.

GRRR.

Eleven

Happy Nigel Tufnel Day! 

Crank it up to 11...

Big Bottom

Snow Foolin'

First snowfall of the season -- no accumulation, but snow came down, regardless. Big, thick flurries. Today was oddly unsettled -- rain in the morning, then clouds, then snow, then sun, then snow. Now windy. I biked to work today, although, clearly, my biking days are numbered. The winds are picking up, and it's getting sloppier. Makes it something of a liability to travel. I actually fell over on my bike today, something that hasn't happened in years (not even when that wave swamped me). I was at a light, waiting for it to change, and went to put a leg out to step on a curb, but I misjudged the distance, and went right over, like a tree falling over! Whoopsie! Pedestrians, to their credit, came over to help, probably thinking I had had a stroke or something, the way I just went over. I thanked them and helped myself back up. I wasn't even embarrassed, although it was certainly embarrassing. It was just one of those things, like slipping on the ice or something. Gravity reminds you who's running the show in moments like that. I was just glad I hadn't torn my slacks or messed up my shoes or anything like that.

The boys are super-stoked to have so many Daddy Days in a row. They are loving it! I am, too!

RIP, Joe Frazier

I saw that Joe Frazier died. He was one of the legendary boxers of the last century, never quite got his full due, just because he had the misfortune to be a heavyweight in the time of Muhammad Ali and George Foreman in their prime. His ungainly slugger style and lack of charisma always made him the straight man for Ali's gleeful imp. But he was definitely one of the greats.

Joe Frazier Tribute

Sylvester Stallone effectively stole Frazier's story and turned it into "Rocky," which, I'm sure, had to make Frazier that much more embittered, to see his story turned into a white man's boxing epic.

32 wins (27 by KO), 4 losses, 1 draw.

I always had some fondness for Frazier, just because he was so clearly a great boxer who was forced to stand and fight with some incredible boxers, and who never flinched, never gave up, showed a lot of heart in the face of that.

Bizarrely, I was playing "Knockout Kings" with the boys on the Playstation last night, and I actually picked Frazier for a match against B1, who was playing Ali. I hadn't even known about Frazier's imminent demise until after playing, but that was weird.

I will be genuinely sad when Ali finally dies. Parkinson's has shut him down for decades, but he was an amazing figure in a brutal sport. Frazier's passing is a tolling of the bell. Of course, these greats have actually managed to overshadow the sport, itself, which has fallen to the canvas and will never really get up -- UFC , WWF and the other assorted man-grappling arena stuff has long eclipsed boxing, and boxing's own corruption and what-not has forever tarred the sport. But Frazier and those like him came from a time when boxing was a huge and compelling event. Boxing was always a brutal sport, and Frazier was a brutal boxer, but there was beauty in that brutality, as hard as it might be for non-fans to imagine. Boxing wasn't known as "the sweet science" for nothing -- there was elegance in a perfectly thrown set of combinations, in a boxer's heart, in setting up an opponent and taking them down.

Frazier was one of the last of boxing's true Greats.

Ali on Frazier

Musical

I'm uploading some of my umpteen CDs to my computer. It amuses me, just because CDs were supposed to be THE thing -- I mean, decades ago, I remember when they were trotted out that way. Now, they are effectively obsolete. At some point, CD/DVD players will cease to be, and CDs will vanish as everything becomes MP3 (at least until the next proper storm of energy from the sun blanks out everything electronic -- haha). All the same, it's funny to wade through these old discs. Exene always wanted me to throw them out, said her usual mantra "What's the point?" with anything she didn't value or appreciate. I would say "I am keeping them so I can have an archive of the music I like, in case I need to upload them, or if a computer crashes, etc." She'd just shrug it off, as she did so much. All the same, I've got'em, and am loading them up to my new computer, something I hadn't done for years.

Say what you will about Hole -- their "Live Through This" was a good album for its time (1994 -- now squarely in the confines of "a long time ago"), and the album cover was killer. That picture was so damned perfect -- the snarly-smiled, Heathers-esque beauty pageant winner/prom queen from Hell? Masterful...

Model Leilani Bishop: "I WON! YAY, ME!"

Hey, you Fawkes!

Happy Guy Fawkes Day! Not like it means much in the States, although Occupy Wall Street and Anonymous have certainly made the Guy Fawkes mask and, of course, V for Vendetta, more common sites. I remember reading "V" in the long-ago time -- like a year or two after it came out, since I liked Moore's "Watchmen." Anyway, I bet Moore is pleased to see the proliferation of V/Fawkes masks on the whole protest movement front.

Old Man Winter, on the march

Halloween past, Autumn has definitely given up the ghost, and Winter is well on its way. I'm near the end of my biking season, just because it gets too sloppy and crazy as Winter comes on the scene. Yesterday I had 30 mph wind gusts hitting me on the ride down and back, which makes for a challenging ride (given that my top biking speed is about 12 mph!)

I have the boys the next two weekends, because of Exene's running obsession err, hobby. I'm fine with that, and the boys are fine with that; they love "Daddy Weekends." B2 always hugs me lots when he first sees me again, says "I love you, Daddy! I missed you!" which is always touching. When they found out they had a cluster of Daddy Days, they were stoked.

Exene is actually going out of town next weekend, on a trip with one of her "gal pals" as she puts it. Running another race. I told her I'd be fine with watching the boys, so long as I get equivalent "comp time" at some point. Not that I have any travel plans, but I just always have to be sure for reciprocity, where Exene is concerned.

Anyway, as biking season nears an end for me, it'll mean taking the CTA, which is fine, but it'll be an added expense I have to factor into my already-packed budget. That was the nice thing about the biking -- free transportation (and I worked my exercise into my commute). As Winter kicks into gear, it'll mean X expense, moneywise, and me having to block out more time for exercise. Ah, well. Not complaining, just aware of the options ahead of me.

Of course, I never actually complain about the weather; it simply is. And since Fall/Winter is prime Writing Season for me, I welcome it, honestly. If I lived in Hawaii, I'd never get a damned thing written, would just drink rum and walk the beach, collecting shells, or hike around the volcanoes and in the jungles. But living in Chicago, the bad weather is an incentive to create, honestly. And so, I will.

Olive Park, right near Navy Pier.

Scuffles, Sniffles, and Skittles

Poor B1 tripped (or was tripped; still trying to suss that out) at the playground yesterday, and scuffed up his face. He has a scrape on his cheek and across the bridge of his nose. Poor lil' scamp looks like a boxer! He's okay, otherwise. I'm just glad that he didn't crack any teeth. Lordy. When B1 falls, he's like a tree being felled -- he never manages to get his hands out to catch himself.

Got a flu shot the other day. Woo hoo! We'll see if I get the flu. Any time I get that shot, I eventually catch the flu. Fucking flu!

The boys were too jaded to go trick-or-treating on Halloween! After hitting the business districts in our 'hood over the weekend, when Halloween came, I asked'em if they were up for it, and they were both "Meh." I'm old-school in my trick-or-treatery, so I was like "Really? Not even for more candy?" and they were like "Nah, we have enough candy." Wow!