The Old Man and the Seeds

Recently, I decided to dip my toe into the Kindle publishing waters. The story I posted here seemed like a good one to use as my test run. If you're still interested in reading it, it shoul be available at the Kindle store on an Internet near you.

Thanks!
--Bryan

Black Dogs, Agility, and Peanut Butter Cookies

It’s been a bit of a week.

Sleep has been hard to come by, lately. Aside from the odd siren zooming by and keeping me awake, the Budge is also teething.

I do not recommend teething, by the way, in case you had it on your bucket list. Mostly it seems to involve writhing around in pain, sucking on your fingers and waking up screaming at all hours of the night. Kinda like staying at the Ramada.

But my insomnia runs deeper than sirens and babies – a state of distraction that I can’t seem to shake. Anyone who knows me well also knows my moods, what Churchill called his black dog.

Ok, Christ, now I’m comparing myself to Churchill. Also, MS Word automatically capitalizes the word Christ when you type it. See? It just did it again. I didn’t suddenly get religion or something.

What was I talking about? No, before Churchill. Ok, right. Anyway, I get moods. Y’know, bad ones. I guess no one ever says they get moods if the moods they get are all happy and sunshiney, do they?

Take it easy today with your mother. She’s in one of her moods. Say the wrong thing and she’s liable to give you a hug and feed you peanut butter cookies.

Anyway, I am prone to deep introspective vortexes of self-doubt and general anxiety, a condition the Germans used to call angst before all the emo kids co-opted it. Generally I keep this stuff at bay through various outlets, climbing and writing being my go-to power duo.

Lately, not so much. There’s just no time. There’s work, and there’s sleep (ha!), and then there’s the weekend, which is hard to dedicate to anything other than laundry and recovery.

What I’m realizing, though, is that I’m not a particularly flexible thinker. I’m used to pouring about three hours a day into my writing, and several hours a week into climbing. And if I can’t make those broad strokes work… I’m kinda at a loss.

How do I keep a connection to those things that keep me sane when I can only get random, unpredictable, bite-sized chunks of time in which to pursue them? This is not my forte.

I am definitely more reactive than proactive. Maybe that’s from being the youngest in a large family – I got used to seeing where my siblings were headed and then tagging along. Building routines gave me some control over my own destiny, but it’s not a skill I execute with any dexterity. Knock down my jenga blocks and you will see that I rebuild the tower using rubber tongs tied to the end of a ten-foot iron rod. It is a process somewhat lacking in the nimble department.

I gotta say, I envy people who can really roll with it – people who can have their pieces scattered and somehow seem to catch them all in mid-air and rebuild on the fly. How do you people do that?

Giraffe Dumpster Story: The True Victims

Okay, so I'm a little late to the game on this one, but a couple weeks ago, a giraffe at the Albuquerque Zoo was put down due to a debilitating injury. But instead of taking the body to the zoo's special "big friggin' animal disposal" area, zoo personnel apparently just chopped the massive awkward beast into pieces and tossed it into the dumpster.

No, really.

Now, if you read the article you will see that people are outraged. Outraged, I say. Children weeping in the streets, men waving torches and calling for blood, or worse, Congressional investigations. An entire city unified by grief and an unquenchable thirst for justice over the giraffe's graceless post mortem handling.

Outrage? Over a giraffe? I think not.

Giraffes are freaks. Nobody gets attached to a giraffe. It's not like this was a polar bear or a wolf or a tiger or something cool. I mean, even zebras make fun of giraffes behind their backs. And zebras walk around all day wearing Zubaz. They are in a position to make fun of no one. 

But there is one party that has a right to be outraged by this whole stinking affair. One group whose rights were sorely neglected, whose needs were overlooked, whose very way of life was ignored when Kafka the giraffe (or whatever) was chopped up and tossed into the nearest trash bin.

I'm speaking, of course, about the lions.

I mean come on, people! They were gonna throw the giraffe away anyway! That's like 1,600 pounds of good ol' Serengeti home cooking.

These lions have spent their whole lives locked in a cage, eating what... Whiskas? And the zookeeper can't even throw them so much as a little neck meat?

Can you imagine that? That's like being stuck in a jail your whole life, eating nothing but tuna straight from the can, and then watching as your captors threw away five hundred In-N-Out burgers. I would hang myself, right there. If I had opposable thumbs. And rope. Which I wouldn't, because I would be a lion.

Beyond the noble goal of giving these big fearsome cats a decent meal, the act would have served a useful educational purpose. The children (of whom one must always think) would get an up-front and personal lesson on the grisly reality of life on the African plains.

And if the lions couldn't eat it all, just bring in the hyenas. Then the vultures. Then the ants.

It's the circle of life.

(dumpster photo courtesy DamnedVulpine)

A Portrait of Hamlet as a Young Man

I’ll admit right off that I’m no expert on Shakespeare. I’ve read several of his plays, seen a few stage productions, seen a few screen versions. Not a CV worth noting.

But I’ve got a soft spot for Hamlet. I’ve got one of the Gielgud productions as an audiobook on my iPod, and whenever I get bored with my music or my podcasts or other audiobooks, Gielgud’s Hamlet slips right back into the queue. Is it nerdy to say that it never disappoints?

Well, suck it. It never disappoints.

Gielgud wasn’t an actor. He was an Actor, back before The Method or Stanislavski or whatever gave birth to the well-meaning creature whose inbred offspring finally limped and fumbled their way into begetting mumblecore.

It’s a brilliant thing to listen to Gielgud deliver Hamlet. When he’s over the top, he is positively scraping his follicles on the ceiling. His scene with the Ghost of Hamlet Sr. is, to put it softly, a scenery chewing binge that would bring rouge to the cheeks of William Shatner.

But why not? Why not? Your father dies, comes back as a ghost, and tells you that your uncle did it, and oh by the way, please kill the aforementioned offending party, who now happens to be married to your mother and who also happens to have a plaque inscribed with “King of Denmark” on his desk.

Right. Let’s see Brando cool his way through that one:

“That’s a bum rap, Pops. I’ll see what I can do.”

Dis. Satisfying. You need some Drama in your drama.

But where Gielgud really shines is in the low notes. The quick asides, the deadpan sarcasm he tosses at his “uncle-father” and “aunt-mother.” You can feel Hamlet’s bitterness as he absorbs every footstep that tramples over his father’s memory.

Anyway, I’ve been listening to Hamlet again lately, which prompted me to spend some time on the web, researching the play and it various interpretations over the centuries. And it occurs to me that people are kinda doing it wrong. (This is where my complete lack of qualification swoops in. Hold off the gong for just a moment, though, if you please.)

It seems like the major debate around the character of Hamlet himself focuses on his lack of, shall we say, agile decision making. Hamlet agonizes over his charge to kill his uncle, even though his own beloved father dragged himself back from Hell in order to give Hamlet the Columbo version of what happened, and then demand that his death be avenged.

Well what is this Hamlet guy waiting for? Just kill dear old Uncle Claudius and get cleaned up for dinner. Plenty of leftovers from the funeral/wedding.

Well, he’s crazy, say some. Or he’s indecisive. Weak-willed. Or my favorite, badly written.

Oh, I’m sorry Mr. State College Literature Thesis Guy! Did William Fucking Shakespeare not write the most complex character in human history to your exacting specifications? Maybe we should take a look at your own masterwork of dramatic writing, cleverly entitled Jack Squat.

So, here’s what I think. I think that Hamlet’s long, tortuous journey toward vengeance only seems weird because we’re used to seeing middle-aged men playing the part. Gielgud. Burton. Branagh. Hell, even Gibson.

I’m sorry, but aren’t we forgetting the fact that Hamlet was, oh, a teenager?

That’s right. A teenager. A college student, one who liked living it up – drinking, fencing, chasing girls, going to see the players. Your general Animal House lifestyle. His back and forth would probably seem a lot more understandable if he were more frequently cast as Luke Skywalker instead of Old Ben Kenobi.

Of course it seems weird to see Mel Gibson hemming and hawing his way through trying to work up the nerve to kill his ghost-convicted murderous letch of an uncle. Mel Gibson killed 193 people in the first five minutes of Lethal Weapon. Okay, not really, but he’s a grown man. A grown man would know his own mind well enough to make a choice and take action. When he can’t, it seems a bit off.

But Hamlet is a kid. If he and Romeo had met, they would probably have hung out, staring at blacklight posters, listening to Pink Floyd and talking about their girlfriends. Hamlet’s not ready for the big-boy world of regicide and revenge and supernatural death warrants. Hell, three weeks ago, he was trying to pick between Intro to Sociology and Business Management 101. It’s a big adjustment.

Hamlet’s smart, clever, creative, naive, but also cynical, self-doubting, impulsive, and fearful. Sound like any demographic you know? He wants to do his father’s bidding, but like any good teenager, he has to do it his own way. Hell, Brando would understand that. A kid’s gotta rebel a little, doesn’t he?

What I’m saying is this: I want to see an age-appropriate Hamlet. I want to see a Hamlet who just got his fake ID, picked his major, had humiliating first-time sex with a co-ed, and then gets the call from home.

Put down the beer bong, young prince. Your father, King of All Denmark, is dead.

Somali Pirates Make Poor Tactical Decision

The USS Nicholas is a 445-foot guided missile frigate. It weighs approximately 4,200 tons, can reach speeds of over 29 knots, and comes standard with a tasty array of sonar, RADAR, and other advanced sensor technology. Oh, and about half a dozen weapon systems.

I'm telling you this so that, in case you ever spot the Nicholas on the open seas, you do not try to hijack it in your three-person speedboat. Which is exactly what a trio of rather unfortunate Somali pirates attempted to do a few nights ago.

Now, granted, it was dark, and the pirates probably didn't realize they were attacking a ship that was not only armed, but actually had several entire genres of weapons from which to choose when it came time to defend itself.

But I like to think the pre-attack planning went something like this:

Ibrahim: There is the ship. We attack at once!
Sharif: Yay!
Ibrahim: Omar? I did not hear you cheering.
Omar: …
Ibrahim: Sighs. What is it this time, Omar?
Omar: I just… I am not sure that this is an oil tanker.
Ibrahim: It is. It is an oil tanker. I am certain.
Omar: How do you know?
Ibrahim: I just do. I know.
Omar: Have you ever seen an oil tanker?
Ibrahim: Yes. Many times.
Omar: I mean in real life. Not on television.
Ibrahim: … It's an oil tanker.
Omar: I don't think it is.
Ibrahim: What do you think it is, Omar? The Love Boat?
Sharif: Ohh! I would like to meet the Gopher!
Ibrahim: Shut up, Sharif. I was only mocking Omar.
Sharif: That is very disappointing.
Omar: Listen, Ibrahim, we should wait until dawn. That way we can make sure it is an oil tanker.
Ibrahim: No. We attack now. I want an oil tanker now.
Omar: Is this just because Noor captured that oil tanker the other day?
Ibrahim: No. That has nothing to do with this. And Noor is stupid. And also, his hair is ugly.
Omar: Ibrahim…
Ibrahim: And nobody likes him anyway. Him and his dumb tanker.
Omar: This is a bad idea.
Ibrahim: It is a great idea. In fact, we will vote on how great an idea it is. Everyone who thinks this is a great idea, raise your hand.
Ibrahim raises his hand. A long beat.
Ibrahim: Sharif, raise your hand.
Sharif: What's in it for me?
Ibrahim: Sharif, raise your hand or I will shoot you and throw you overboard.
Sharif: Omar, do you have a counter-offer?
Omar: I do not.
Sharif raises his hand.
Ibrahim: It is settled then. We attack at once. Sharif, ready your AK-47. Those poor fools will have no choice but to surrender when they hear the bone-chilling report of our automatic weapons!
Omar: Did you practice that line?
Ibrahim: No. Shut up.
Omar: I'm telling you, it's not—
Ibrahim fires his AK-47. BADABADABADABAD!
Ibrahim: It worked! They're slowing—
The night sky ahead blazes with the sudden and terrible flash of 50mm deck guns. THOOMATHOOMATHOOMATHOOMA!
Ibrahim: What in the hell was that!?!
Sharif: I have soiled myself, Ibrahim!

It might seem like overkill for the Nicholas to have attacked a three-person skiff with 50mm mounted deck guns, but keep in mind that these were actually the smallest weapons on the ship. If they'd used any of their other options, the only thing left of their attackers would have been pirate-scented vapor.

After the (ahem) battle with the skiff, the Nicholas went on to capture the pirate mother ship, which I'm guessing isn't nearly as impressive a vessel as the term mother ship implies.

Job well done, Nicholas.

(Photos courtesy the official USS Nicholas website, and Wikipedia.)

Pardon Me While I Get My Geek On

As any good Trek fan knows, there is a certain protocol in dealing with the Borg.

When the first couple of drones show up, you just nail 'em with your phasers. No problem. They'll go down like a sack of cybernetic wheat. You go on with your day, aligning phase couplings and whatnot.

But then the third or fourth 'assimilatedly disadvantaged' arrives on the scene, and you discover that your phaser blasts no longer do the trick. The Borg have sprouted personal energy shields, handy little devices that throw up windows of translucent, tessellated barriers that are genuinely phaser proof. They kinda look like your grandma's old shower door. Except, y'know, impervious to bursts of highly focused photonic energy.

Now you might get a little panicky, but all is not yet lost. You simply change phaser frequencies, maybe moving from your previous shrieky 90 million khz down to a nice robust Old Man Riveresque 40 million. And that will do the trick. For a short while. Maybe one or two more drones, which in Borg terms, is really a drop in the bucket. I mean, these guys have a better recruitment program than DeVry.

So, now you're down to some tricky slight-of-hand. You need to set your phasers to a constantly rotating, randomly selected frequency. This has the dual effect of popping through a few additional Borg shields while also making your phaser beam a bit more festive, which is definitely something to keep in mind during this holiday season. But alas, no matter how many glad tidings your phaser beam inspires, there will come a point at which all your tricks simply stop working. The Borg shields will repel anything you throw at them, and your phasers will be about as effective as a laser-pointer.

It is then that you will lower your weapons in creeping dismay, and somebody, usually Worf (though Data adds an ironic sense of emotionless detachment to the phrase) will intone, darkly:

"They have adapted."

Which basically means, Nice knowing you, redshirts, 'cuz we are fresh outta options.

At this point, Worf will usually run forward with a giant knife and just start can-opening the cybernetic freakshows, as heavy bladed weapons are apparently the trump card in this particular game of rock-paper-scissors. And if that's the case, then sign me up for bat'leth lessons, because you see…

My son has adapted.

At first it was easy to get this kid to fall asleep. A little rocking, a little white noise. But one by one, my little tricks stopped working. I would rock, the white noise would wash away the memory of his hectic day sucking boob and filling diapers, but he would just stare back up at me, with his big wide eyes. Lifeless eyes, like a doll's eyes.

Okay, actually, they're incredibly cute little eyes, not so much problematic because of their resemblance to a shark's as their tendency to be wide, wide open when it is clearly time for Baby to Sleep.

So I tried rocking him differently. Every way I could think of. Seriously, I am to baby rocking techniques what Derek Zoolander is to pouty looks. I've got The Jostle, The Swing, The Sway, The Dipsy-Doo, The Ketchup Bottle, The Bounce, The Lap Leaner, and of course, the ultra-difficult Rocking-Sway Combo Deluxe. We now generally have three different white noise generators in the room at any given time, only one of which ever has the magic key to dream land. They helped. For a while.

We then brought out the big guns. After quadruple-checking with every parent book and our own highly regarded pediatrician, we introduced the Binky. Oh the Binky. Cruel, clever, treacherous Binky. How quickly you soothe our Boy to sleep. But there is a price, cackled the little gnome. Oh yes, there is a price. For as soon as your child falls asleep, he will drop the Binky, and then, in his half-sleeping state, he will attempt to find the thing. With his face. Needless to say, this is an exercise in frustration. And waking up.

We tried the chair swing. This worked exactly once. Man, did he love that chair swing the first time we tried it. And man oh man, has he hated the living guts of out the thing every time since.

And on. And on.

It's as if we're not so much finding new ways to put him to sleep as we are inoculating him against them.

It has been an interesting year, kids.

Which is not a good sign, as it has actually only been four weeks.

Now if you'll pardon me, my son has adapted.

What We Have Here Is A Failure To Communicate

I cannot claim that we were not warned. We were warned. Oh the warnings.

Between the Wife and I, we have had new parents lined up around the proverbial block, veritably pushing and shoving each other for the chance to tell us how hard it was going to be. I firmly believe that as much as people enjoy being comfortable, they freaking love being miserable, as long as they know someone else will be next. Eyes positively twinkle. Grins tremble with mischief. For further reading, please see Every Japanese Gameshow Ever Made.

So we knew it was going to be hard. We got that. But really, there’s a visceral quality to the hard-ness that you just don’t hear about. Well, that’s not true. You hear about it. But hearing about it isn’t really useful. Hearing about how hard Mike Tyson hits is not the same as actually being punched in the gut by that same fine gentleman.

The best way I can think to describe what it’s like is the ditch-digging scene from Cool Hand Luke.

“Boy, Mr. Baby wants him some clean diapers and he wants them right now.”
“Diapering up, Boss.”
“Now boy, what’d you go and put them nice clean diapers on Mr. Baby for? Can’t you see he done already soiled them? Now maybe you should go on and do that again.”
“Yes sir, Boss.”
“Boy! What do you think you’re doing putting diapers on Mr. Baby when he clearly needs to feed again and then be burped and rocked while he screams bloody murder right in your face? You get on that, boy!”
“Getting’ right on it, Boss.”
“Boy! Did someone come by here and tell you to stop getting Mr. Baby’s diaper changed? Now get that done afore I whoop some sense into you.”

So, it’s like that, on an infinite loop.

And it’s hard enough right there, but having the Wife roll through this same torture right next to me is simply heartbreaking.

First of all, watching her give birth to our son redefines the concept of a humbling moment. I don’t care if you’re a Navy SEAL or Frank Lloyd Wright or Thomas Jefferson or Gandhi. In a contest of accomplishments against a woman who has given birth, you lose. I’m still not sure I believe all the things I saw during that process. It was simultaneously the most miraculous and most brutal thing I’ve ever witnessed. I figure, given the events of the Boy’s entry into this world, she’s done enough for… oh, say, ever.

But the Boy does not agree.

There are certain boob-related functions for which the Wife is ever-so-slightly better equipped than I, and her services are in high demand among the sub-one-week-old demographic at our particular address. Aside from that, she feels an almost irresistible need to stay by his side at all times, which must be programmed in at the genetic level. You never know when those saber-tooth tigers are going to strike. I wish I could poke fun at this, but I’d by lying if I claimed to check his breathing less than three-thousand times a minute when he naps. He’s just so little.

They say sleep deprivation is the foundation of any really effective torture regimen, and I say Amen. There have been times over the past few days that I would have gladly confessed to orchestrating 9/11 for a half hour of solid sleep. Given the Wife’s already spent body, and our cumulative lack of shuteye, you might think we’d be a mess.

We’ve often joked that we would never go on the Amazing Race, as much as we love the show, because after a few days of non-stop stress and extra-strength jetlag, we’d be at each other’s throats.

I can no longer stand by that opinion.

Because, as a team, we’ve never been better. We teeter and lurch past each other like two Drunken Masters, swapping diapers and wipes and bottles and our tiny little sensei himself. When I can’t get the swaddle, the Wife is there. When the Boy refuses to be soothed by the very woman who squeezed him out of her lady-business just a few short days ago, I scoop and I shush and he’s suddenly all eyes and no mouth, and There Is Peace. Briefly.

And these skills are not static, I am not Shush-Man to my wife’s Swaddle Girl. It’s more that whatever ball I seem to drop, the Wife snatches up and tosses back into the air, and vice-versa. It’s a dynamic little improv act we’ve established, and if 4am manages to arrive and our audience is snoozing away in the back row, there are high-fives all around.

It is hard. But...

It is hard and it is the best thing I’ve ever lived through. Everyone tells you this, too. I don’t have any movie references for this one. All I can say is, as hard as it’s been, I’ve never been happier about anything in my life.

There are moments, and they’re rapidly growing in both frequency and amplitude as we work the kinks out of our act, that make all trauma seem like a bargain.

In those rare moments of planetary alignment, when milk and diaper and burps and swaddling are all checked off the list, the Boy assumes an expression that the experts call Calm Alert, but which I can only describe as a state of perpetual, slightly cynical disbelief. He sits in my tiny little hands, and he sizes up his world. His lip curls up a little and he squints at everything with the same confused expression. I would not be surprised if his first words were: “Are you kidding me?”

But the best moments, the absolute best moments, are when I’m done burping him. He’s a great burper, by the way, an epic burper. You may have thought you heard thunder in the past week, but it was just my Boy venting a little milk vapor.

At any rate, when I’m done burping him on my shoulder, he wriggles and grunts his little way up a little further, and he doesn’t stop until his tiny face is nestled up in the crook of my big dumb neck. And then he just kinda… melts.

And every time he does this, it’s the best moment of my entire life. Hands down. I glow from within like some sort of human/lava lamp hybrid

They told me it would be hard. But now… now I know why.

You don’t just get the best moments in your life. You have to earn them.