Defender of the Innocent

It's not often that yelling at your kid ends in any sort of positive, but darn if the strangest things don't happen around this household.

To defend my self, here was the deal - my 6-month old was sitting in her seat, bouncing like a bobblehead, trying to eat some carrot mush I was feeding her. We were listening to the radio we were informed a tornado warning (warning, meaning we've seen one and it's coming this way) came over the squawk box. I figured (being a midwesterner and having survived countless warnings of this sort), that it was time to hustle, not run.

So I kept feeding the carrots to the kid, who, God bless her, just wasn't cooperating. The strained vegetable matter had fashioned itself into a beard on her face, and she's picked up this thing where she spits. CSI could have had a field day the spatter of carrot blood on the white tray table.

My four-and-a-half year old handled things better, but not by much. She was nervous, and when she gets nervous, she gets distracted. You tell her something and if it gets through, which can take two or three times, you have to keep her on task or it will disappear in her chasm of distraction. I really needed her to get a bottle out of the fridge since we'd be downstairs waiting out the storm for God knows how long, but it just wasn't sinking in. Then the sirens went off.

The sirens have always sort of evoked a mild panic in me, and my reaction was in line with that Pavlovian response. To wit, I snapped at the older kid, telling her to get the bottle. She responded, as girls that age do, by throwing her arms up in the air and running out of the room in tears, the bottle still firmly in the fridge.

At this point, my priorities were 1) finish feeding the young 'un, 2) get the bottle, 3) get the two kids downstairs before the tornado got any closer. There was time. Quit looking at me like that.

But the smaller kid would not eat. The sirens were blaring, the carrots continued running down her cheek, and I snapped again. In a raised voice, I spat "EAT!" Please understand the stress.

Through the wail of the sirens, I heard a strong voice behind me.

"Don't yell at my sister."

There stood the older kid, arms crossed and dead serious. Immediately I softened (I'm not a monster) and got everything cleaned up and every one down stairs. The tornado passed us by, something I'm still thankful for.

But tonight, I smile thinking about my daughter. She and I are pretty close, and like a lot of almost 5-year-olds, she's a goofy kid. She and her mother fight, but she doesn't fight with me so much. It's not a "good cop bad cop" thing, but more of a personality mesh - she's more like me at this stage in her life. Sometimes I worry about that, how other kids will respond, whether gumption and fortitude is in her future. Than I see her mother come through so clearly in her personality like I did tonight, and I just smile. She's going to be fine.

She's a defender of the innocent and weak against the big strong jerk who was yelling at her to eat her carrots, even if it was in the face of mortal danger. I'm proud of her, a whole bunch.

The Intertubes are for Happy Wishes!

Matthew Campbell turns 30 today. It's a good day.



I met Matt in the late summer of 1996, when I was a mess and he was the reigning drum major in a major metropolitan high school. You should see the pictures - plumes and shoulder pads and everything. We were both in band camp at the University of Nebraska at Kearney, he a trombone, me a sousaphone. I saw him reading either Clive Barker or Stephen King (I can't remember which) during lunch and we started talking about The Green Mile, King's serial that he was still releasing, piece by piece, at the time.



We struck up a friendship that's continued longer than any I think I've ever had. He's seen me through bad hook ups, ignorance of female physiology, 40 + on my loft in my first dorm room, bisexual women, black hair, fundamentalists (he's got a great story about marking his calendar by the fights I had with my girlfriend), moving, living in a church, Grant in general, the happy dance, the wall of beautiful women, my lies, choosing a song from a Michael Bay movie for my wedding and more late nights, miles and confessions than one friend deserves from another.



Looking back, as blogging can often force you to do, Matt has proven himself over and over as nothing more than a decent guy - a gentleman, pop scholar, writer and kicker of much ass in Halo. He's the kind of friend every guy should have, one you can unload on or do nothing but watch "Mythbusters" for hours on end. He's the guy who knows enough to embarrass me in any situation (and who's brother nearly cost me a long-term relationship, though I think he's pretty cool) and a guy who I could embarrass at any point. And I have and only regretted it once or twice.



Cheers, brother. Here's to 30 more years of the Brain Bug Boogie you call an existence. And, here's that picture you made me take last year at B-Fest of the cute reporters ass.



OK, that was my idea, too.



Can't wait for Saturday.

Indiana Jones and the Purpose of Being

After the events of "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," Mutt Williams is climbing down the mountain into the dense jungle, a changed young man.

Mutt: Hey dad, I've been thinking about what just happened.

Indiana Jones: And?

M: I've decided to go back to school, like you want..

IJ: Really?

M: Yeah.

IJ: Do you know what you want to study?

M: I'm thinking philosophy. Why are you laughing?

IJ: Well, it's not exactly science, is it?

M: Yeah, but after what happened up there, with the aliens fathering ancient civilization, how can you not spend the rest of your life thinking about that?
IJ: Ah, I've seen better.

M: What?
IJ: There's more to life than aliens, Junior. This one time your mother and I were fighting these Nazis who uncovered the Arc of the Covenant and...

M: Excuse me, what?

IJ: You know, the Arc of the Covenant between God and his chosen people. We found it in Egypt since after the crusades...

M: No no no...the Arc is real?

IJ: It melted a dude's face off.

M: But..so you're telling me, not only are there aliens skipping dimensions and founding civilizations in Africa, but there's physical proof of the God of the Old Testament?

IJ: Well, yeah.

M: Then are the aliens God or did God create the aliens? Wait...it doesn't matter, because if the Old Testament is true than God wants us to have it and whether those Gods are aliens or the aliens are created by God, then that book is the truth.

IJ: Archeology isn't about truth, it's about fact.

M: But you can't deny it's instructions straight from our creating force. I need to live by it's teachings, I need to ditch this leather jacket and sacrifice a goat. I need to learn how to deal with mold in my house in a sacred manner. I need to get circumcised.

IJ: Circumcised?

M: Well, it's a covenant between God and his people, isn't it? Can't have a covering on Henry Jones the Fourth, that's for damn sure. The only thing I need to figure out now is where the New Testament fits into this.

IJ: Well...

M: Well what?

IJ: Well, I drank from the Holy Grail this one time, and...

M: JESUS CHRIST, DAD!

IJ: No, it was this night who was tasked with gaurding the grail...

M: I don't care! You have physical proof that Jesus Christ exists in the form of the Holy Fucking Grail!

IJ: Watch your mouth, Junior.

M: You're right. I can't swear. I need to give away all my money, never hit anyone again, live following the teachings of Jesus and never eat grain on Sundays. I need to kill fig trees and overturn money changers. Oh Lord, my immortal soul is at stake.

IJ: Listen son, your mother and I...

M: To hell with the two of you. I need to go firebomb an abortion clinic.

Hey, that's me!

To set the scene: I was at work, running an errand in my car with "Filmspotting" playing on my iPod. The rain starts to really pour, and the errand I'm running involves paper, so I pull over into an empty parking lot and sit for a minute to see if the rain will let up.

Adam and Matty are going on about Speed Racer and then "Born Into Brothels," a movie I'm interested in seeing and a flick that ties in with their Top 5 photography movies. Then, they say my name and read an e-mail I sent them weeks ago.

Cool. I'll post the clip later (I'm a bit pressed for time right now and don't want to fight with Blogger about how to upload audio), but it was very cool. Filmspotting is a great podcast and I was really jazzed to be on it. It left me feeling good all day.

We'll Do It Live!

I know this is about a week late, but it's real catchy, none the less.

Consider Me Captured

The old axiom is that music is universal - things human beings feel on a deep level are often relived through the media of music. A chord can capture a story, a song can cut you on many layers or heal you on all of them. BS, I say.

As someone who engages in his fair share of self pity (let's be honest, more than my fair share), I think people who cling to music are making a personal mountain out of something that can never be anything other than a mole hill to everyone else on the planet. It's why all pop songs that appeal to mass audiences are so empty - they're trying to say something so simple everyone can understand it. It's why every single song about heartbreak is about YOUR heartbreak, while every happy song somehow sees into your soul. It's the Bob Dylan thing, it's everything and nothing depending on whether your glass is half full or half empty with a chip missing out of the rim where you drink.

At least, that's the way I usually feel. Music is a diversion, I say, not a pursuit. It's one beam of light on the way to truth, not anything approaching truth itself.

Sometimes, the combo of music and lyric really can hit you hard and turn the glass from half empty and grimy, needing another rinse cycle to half full and full of cold, crisp water after a long drought. It happens a lot to some people. It hardly ever happens to me.

But today, boy did music catch up with me, so allow me to pontificate on why my own private mountain might be more of than a mole hill to somebody else. God, I sound pretentious. Every onward.

In the middle of the workday, the episode of "Filmspotting" (a great podcast full of intelligent dialogue about movies, you should listen to it) went into what would be their commercial break if you were listening on terrestrial radio. On came some guy playing an acoustic guitar. I didn't bother to learn his name and don't much care to, but he hit me with this lyric.

"I've sailed this far with my boat on fire."

He went on to some truly lousy rhyme about "failing to expire," and tried to turn the whole thing into a life affirming piece. To hell with that, it was the nugget that interested me. The perfect line landed like a kick to the face you didn't see coming and all you can do is fall to the floor. What a great line. I wish I'd written it.

I wish I'd written it because it's not just the way I've been feeling lately (I'll get into that in a bit) but the way I know a lot of people feel. This phrase is part of the reason I'm not a conspiracy theorist, because it's a universal human condition to feel, at some point, like you're faking everything in your life and you don't know where the hell you're going, how the hell you got where you are and where the hell you're going to end up. But what are you going to do? Sink? Quit trying to put out your sail? Hell no. I've sailed this far with my boat on fire. Why not a little further. Sometimes the heat from the sails is kind of nice.

I'm in a boat with no idea where I'm headed. This weekend, I got to spend some time with my parents and my sister, and after a few drinks and 2/3rds of a chess match my dad and I started talking about this sort of thing - direction and decision and how damned futile it is to try to figure these things out. Turns out, when I was the age of my oldest daughter and my sister the age of my youngest daughter, my dad had a really rough go of things. He fought with my mom and backed himself into a corner and had to fight like hell to get out and there was no light at the end of the tunnel for a long time. He sailed further than most with his boat on fire, and apparently came out on the other side. His reward for sailing was certainty in the winter, a somewhat peaceful sea at the end. Have I beating this goddamned metaphor to death yet? Yes I have.

I guess that's what I'm hoping for, to be able to live with my mistakes when my life closes out. Right now, I'm in a position where the bed I've made is unacceptable to me and there doesn't seem to be an end to what I'm fighting. The mistakes I make are the mistakes my father made are the mistakes my daughter will likely make. How depressing is that.

Stupid song lyric.

Picture Monday - They Gotta Come From Somewhere

I manned a trade show booth a couple weeks back, and was stationed right next to the room where all the inflatable people, furry mascots and...I don't know what the hell, got dressed. At the end of the day, they all had to pile in this little room to leave, hence the scene above.

I was a mascot once, and that was enough. I dressed up as a bear for a kids thing in high school. The one word to describe it was uncomfortable - hot and itchy to be more specific and use more than one word. I feel for these folks, but that doesn't make all of them piling into a tiny room any less funny.