Thursday, February 28, 2008

Miscellany: Poop Jokes, Hot Dog Pie, and Short Short Stories

I’m tired, okay?  Not physically tired, which would help because I’m not sleeping as much as I probably ought to be.  My mind is in foment and my body feels inappropriately charged up (for a guy who just spent 9.5 hours at his desk without once traveling farther than the men’s room).  But I am tired OF things - tired of working, tired of cooking, tired of not being at home, tired of being tired, and (dare I admit it) tired of Shmuel.  Yes my yiddishkeit friend, you are a wonderful person and a font of hope and all sorts of good things, but seeing you there at the top of my blog is starting to bring me down.  You’re dead, dude, and you ascribe to a lifestyle I find, to say the least, distinguishable from my own.  But tonight is double-island-madness night (Survivor AND Lost), and I expect there will be some cold beer in the fridge once I get home, and I think things are poised for improvement.  Well, let’s see what I can do here to break the Shmuelistic pallor and shake things up a little. 

I think I promised some poop jokes.  Let’s start there, follow up with some math-related food-throwing, and finish with some small literary treats.  That should clear the decks for whatever decides to enblogulate itself here next. 

I have been, as I mentioned, diagnosed with a curious condition, “jumper’s knee.” I had my first PT session for it last night.  It went a lot better than I had feared ever since my diagnosing orthopod had handed me a sheet of recommended therapies.  It was a long, complicated series of three stages of exercises, but right in the middle of the first group of workouts I saw a pairing that struck dread into my heart.  Turns out I was not asked to perform either of these maneuvers - the mini-squat or the stool crawl.  And there was much rejoicing.  By the housekeeping staff and my drycleaner.

NEW SUBJECT: as I mentioned, I went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium a few weekends ago and had a really great time.  Among their exhibits are two - two! - species of otter, riverine and oceanic.  Now I’m not going to badmouth these adorable waterrats, they attract a big crowd and eat shellfish on their backs and maintain charming moustaches, much as I do myself.  But the aquarium being a learn-y kind of place, they insisted on spoiling the cuteness with facts and details.  For instance, did you know that river otters mark their territory?  O yes they do, by spraying a “scent” (stench, reek, noxious liquid) from a gland cunningly concealed between their anus and their urethrea.  It is an area known by many names, two of which I know: choad and taint.  In this case, it is clear that the second of these was utilized by biologists who were seeking a name for the product sprayed therefrom.  What do you think they call the thing that otters spray from their taint?  Sometimes even scientists make the obvious choice. 

OKAY let’s move on, now that I’ve got you warmed up.  Enough with the execretory functions, let’s talk about food.  How about pie?  And hot dogs!  Or, no, how about pi and hot dogs?  I know sometimes you find yourself in the same situation that I encounter - I need to calculate the value of pi, but all I have is a pack of frozen hot dogs or a handful of churros.  Or perhaps a sack of smooth, cylindrical zucchinis (or “courgettes” for the Euro crowd).  Used to be, I’d just eat my zukes and churros and mourn my ignorance, but NO MORE - here’s how to calculate pi by tossing tubelike food.  You only have to toss it 100 or so times, but the more you do it, the close you get.  As it is with so many things.  You tell me how it works out for you.  I don’t feel, at present, much like tossing my dogs. 

OKAY OKAY, now let’s bring the mood back down… hilarity is hilarious and all, but this is a serious blog and I’m a serious guy.  This was evidenced by my incomprehensible feature on LitPark, a site I do enjoy (it’s on my links list, do a little work for once in your life).  Last week or so that site hosted a sort of contesty thing in which writers were asked to tell a story in 75 words.  I told two, and since I rather like them and they’re in my notebook, I consider them fair game so hold tight, here they come:

He queued up for the pharmacist, the lino marked with footworn tape.  Minutes lingered; the line crept.  Initially, it sounded like his lungs, but everybody else had problems too.  Then he rested his head on his walker’s crossbar and sobs racked his bulky frame.  His mottled hands shook on the grips.  A tap: “You okay?  You can move up.” Bewildered, furious, he wheeled himself back out the door but had nowhere to go.

Same bus, every day.  I get on and he’s already there.  I have my usual seat; he’s in his, a few feet down: solid, undistinguished, quiet. He never reads, never listens to music.  For years our routine has been the same: we ignore each other.  Tonight he was looking particularly dapper.  As I approached my seat our eyes met.  He clenched out a grin, I curtly nodded.  Now we’re bus buddies, I guess. 

That’s nice, isn’t it?  A little literary intermezzo.  No idea what comes next but at least it won’t be following old Shmuel.  Now go on with your bad self or selves. 

Monday, February 25, 2008

Shmuel and the Tallis

The Festival of Ephemera has been… concluded? revoked? let’s say, cancelled for lack of interest - which is as it should be.  Ephemera are entitled to no greater indulgence than I have already afforded them.  Let us now briefly pause, before I get back to poop jokes and longwinded tales of events fascinating only to myself, for a moment of reflection.  I’ve done writ a story and I’m not sure why, but you are going to get it now and get it good.  Or well.  I’m not feeling terribly adverbial at present.

Background: I went recently to a lovely bar mitzvah ceremony, which is a standard sabbath morning service at which a youth - in this case, my sterling nephew Aaron - is inducted into the jewish community by leading the congregation in key parts of the ceremony.  Afterwards, but before the congregation descends upon the thimbles of concord grape juice and the tables groaning with kugel and lox and pound cake awaiting in the activities hall, the celebrant is traditionally given a variety of symbolic gifts.  There’s a wine cup from the sisterhood, a certificate of tree-planting by the youth group, a prayerbook from the rabbi and, from the parents, a tallis - a prayer shawl.  As Aaron received his tallis I was wearing one given to me by my own father, who was sitting just across the aisle from me.  It all started me thinking and in the end I wrote this story.  I considered loading it up with hyperlinks for those unfamiliar with the jargon, but then I decided it was too late and anyway why should I deprive you the thrill of internet research?  In that spirit of selfishness and verbosity, I am pleased to unload:

Shmuel and the Tallis

There’s a storied (!) tradition of the interview at heaven’s gate, in which an angel or some such numinousity queries one of the newly dead about why paradise is, or is not, the appropriate destination for that particular soul.  Usually the interlocutor is St Peter but there’s no reason jewish yarnspinners can’t work this genre too.  And thus I’m inspired to try one myself:

When Shmuel was laid out, it was, consistent with everything that had led him to that moment, with tradition.  The coffin was pinewood, untreated, fastened with pegs.  Internment was swift, and prior thereto his corporal remains were never left unattended.  And what he wore, inside that plain pine box that he so briefly occupied above-ground, was a plain white shroud, over which was draped a tattered white shawl woven through with stripes of blue and fringed at three corners with tassels of four threads wrapped and bound in knots by a fifth.  (The fourth tassel had been cut when the garment had been placed on the body.) Shmuel had received this tallis 57 years previously, and had worn it religiously for every holy day and torah reading thenceforward.  He had davened in it and prostrated himself in it on Yom Kippur; he’d shielded his eyes with it and used it to contain the light of the Torah whenever he was called up to read from the scrolls.  It had aged well, as he had himself, but they had both finally reached the end of their respective roads a little threadbare and ragged.  He had even thought, the preceding Saturday morning, as he’d pulled it from its worn velvet bag for the last time, that perhaps it had served him for as long as it would be able. The old tallis had seen better days.  One does not dismiss the services of a lifelong companion so easily, however, and so Shmuel had made no plans to get a new tallis even when he noticed that his rheumy eyes could see right through his old one.  He just thought that the end of an era was upon him.  Three days later, he woke up dead.

“So, I’m dead already?,” he asked himself.  He was passing through darkness.  He could see nothing, felt nothing, but sensed his movement away from one realm and toward another.  His mind was untroubled; his body, nonexistent.  “So,” he reflexively re-inquired into the stygian void, “this is death?”

“Of course it’s death.” The response was felt, not heard; apprehended, not perceived.  “What else would it be?  A chometz hunt?”

Shmuel felt silly for questioning the obvious, but then again, it was his way.  He was an asker of questions, even in answer to other questions.  He had a few good ones in mind right now but he wasn’t sure how to ask them. 

“You’re wondering what’s happening, nu?” The entity’s inquiry pervaded him like thunder pervades falling rain, filling its interstices and shuddering its substance. The silence that ensued was so awfully silent that Shmuel’s answer blurted itself out of its own accord: “Yes, I’m wondering.” All that seemed clear at this point to him was that any further inquiry would be, at best, delaying - at worst, impertinent.  Any understanding he might eventually be granted would be on terms over which he would have no control whatsoever.  He resigned himself to answering, for once.

“Do you think this is heaven?” The question opened up within him like a budding flower. 

“I don’t know.  It’s not what I would have expected.  It feels like an afterlife. From heaven, I don’t know.”

“You’re a wise man, Shmuel.  The real question, though, is not if you’re wise, nu?”

“No?”

“No.  The important thing is not wisdom, but righteousness.  So look at yourself, Shmuel. Do you see a righteous man, or just a clever one?”

Looking at anything had heretofore been an impossibility beyond comprehension in the blackness of the buried coffin.  But upon the entity’s suggestion, a visual image presented itself to Shmuel, one that he immediately recognized.

“Oh dear,” he thought out loud, “what’s happened to my tallis?” For indeed, the vision occurring to him was not that of the gleaming linen shawl he’d seen each time he’d put it on in the many years immediately elapsed.  This tallis, though indisputably the same one, was dingy, tattered and stained; the tzitzis dangling from all four corners hardly more than frayed threads.  The satin atarah at the neck, inscribed with the blessing he always recited but never actually needed to read, was dull and illegible.  A conscientious cook wouldn’t have used that shmata to dry a soup pot.

“So, it’s your tallis?”

“Yes.  I’m sorry.”

“What have you to be sorry about?”

“Look at it.  Look at it!  It’s hardly recognizable!  I can’t believe I wore it to shul, a thing like that.  It’s a shondeh.  I meant no disrespect.... I guess it happened so gradually I never noticed. I just -”

“Enough.  It’s a tallis.  You wore it for your entire lifetime as a man of the community.  So tell me: Why?”

“Why?”

“Why did you wear this tallis?”

“It was ordained!  We all wear it!  It reminds us of birthright and duty!  It honors the almighty!  What do you mean, why?”

“So, you’re saying, if you had no tallis, you would have neglected your duty?  Deprived of this piece of cloth, you would have spent your days dishonoring the holy name?  If you never had a tallis to wrap around your bony shoulders, how long would it have taken you to disown your birthright?”

Shmuel was starting to forget his place in this conversation.  “What kind of a question is that?  What do you think?  Never!  My birthright and my duty are woven through my being like the blue threads woven through this garment - even though they’re barely blue anymore!”

A moment was granted for him to regain himself before he was then asked: “So look back on your life - on the men you met.  Did you ever meet a man who forsook his duty, who lived in disrespect of hashem?”

Shmuel considered the unfurled scroll of his life and answered, “Yes.  Such men are everywhere.  Well, maybe not here, but everywhere else.”

“Indeed.  And that is why you are here, now, engaging in this polemic.  There are two kinds of people who wear the tallis: those who never need to be reminded why they wear it, and those who can never be reminded no matter how often they wear it.  You, Shmuel, are one who does not need reminding.”

“Just those two types?  For all people?  No middle group?”

“Darkness was created, and light.  There was no need to create twilight or dimness or a gentle auroral glow.  These all consist of the two extremes, in different relations.  And thus it is with persons, too - there are good ones and ones who forsake their goodness, and though these extremes occur in innumerably blended degrees, each of you falls to one side or the other.  And thus, your tallis you wore not for the eternal - the eternal is untroubled by individual practice.  Neither did you wear it for yourself, for its knots and tassels and stripes are superfluous to the heart upon which its lessons are already inscribed.  Rather, you wore this tallis as a beacon to those around you who might be induced to blend a little more light into their own darkness.  That’s why it looks to you so worn and dirty.  You see it dimly because of all the light it has bestowed on others, and it appears stained to you because it bears all the stains it helped erase from other souls.  To me, you understand, it is infinitely radiant and impeccably maintained.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“I’m glad to let you know.  And now, you are bade a task: unravel your tallis.  Loosen the knots, pluck free the fringes, tease apart the threads of the fabric. Continue until you are left with a bundle of fibers and a satin strip, and then I will return to you.”

A lonesomeness unlike any he had ever conceived fell upon Shmuel; time was meaningless to him as he confronted his task.  Fingerless, incorporeal, he didn’t even know how to start.  Eventually his concentration focused on one tassel, one knotted bundle of string.  It spoke to him of the first commandment, and he listened to it with all his heart.  He dwelt upon it until it dwelled within him and he absorbed it like bodies are absorbed into the earth.  Understanding came to him at last, and as it did so, the knot became not.  Where once there’d been a firmly tied bundle, now there was a loose grouping of strings.  Shmuel turned to the next knot, and the next commandment.  He let the lesson arise from within him and fill his being.  The strings came loose.  In this way, mitzvah by mitzvah, he deconstructed his tallis.

When he was done all that remained was a jumbled mass of thread and twine, linen fibers kinked from interwoven years.  He sensed the entity’s return, replacing an infinite void with a sense of impossible fullness.  “You’ve left nothing but threads.”

“It was a good tallis.”

“No, the goodness was yours; you’ve just reclaimed it.  You had poured so much of your soul into that tallis, you deserved to get some of it back.  We will leave the fibers to rest with your bones.  But now, congratulations and let’s get going.  Someone would like to ask you a question or two.”

good enough for govt work, anyway, and it’s past my bedtime.  dentist tomorrow, then a big heavy week of big heavy work.  i’ll make up for it with less weighty posts.  till then, take it easy.  it’s not as easy as it sounds.

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Neighborhood Resource

Ephemera returns!  Yeah like you’ve been waiting but here it is anyway....

My neighborhood’s been getting a face lift of sorts - old eyesores are getting gussied up.  The ratty old grocery was torn down and replaced with a normal nice grocery store.  The burger joint that was so depressing bought the failed veggie place next door and totally remodeled into a normal nice awesome burger place.  Okay, it’s sort of generic-looking for my tastes, but it’s the same great burger in a nice new storefront.  And the musty mid-century sporting goods shop next door has simultaneously burned into a nice fancy sort of dayspa place.  The old vacant upturned eye of the deceased Park Walker liquor store has finally been covered over with paper in a respectful acknowledgment of its demise. The Coronet is now a vacant lot, soon to be a brand-new seniors’ services complex.  With the newish De Young filling out its landscaping quite well and the impending amazitude of the upcoming Academy of Sciences, I’ve got to say that the Richmond District is doing all right for itself. 

Then there’s DC.

I’m calling it DC because I don’t wish to use this site to malign anybody or anything more than absolutely necessary for purposes of narrative integrity, unless there’s a really good laugh in it, which is manifestly not the case here.  There have been a few times I’ve said more about someone here than I should have and I’ve regretted it every time.  I don’t want to name those whom I might describe in a less-than-positive light.  It’s insensitive and it diminishes the other person’s dignity.  So if I’m going to be harsh, or even unstintingly realistic about a subject that could benefit from some flattery, I don’t want to make identities too obvious.  So often the things that I wind up writing about are the things that are broken, don’t fit, don’t work.  I guess they’re easy targets.  Maybe it’s mean-spirited of me; I prefer to think of it as merely lazy.  I make my wine from blemished fruit.  And thus I turn again in my mind to DC, an abbreviation I’ll use to spare this little blemish of a shop any avoidably excessive humiliation.  But if I’m going to make wine, let’s get stomping:

I live on a block on which three sides are residential and one, facing the boulevard, is also partly commercial.  There’s a mattress shop, a little medical supplies store, a prescription herb outlet and a questionable bodywork establishment up a steep flight of stairs.  Additionally, for many years, there was shop where music could be digitized in various ways.  It looked like a decent little space, with a large front window that revealed an open room around which keyboards and drum kits and lots of CPUs were scattered, strung together with thick dark cables.  It was about a year ago that this establishment disestablished itself; subsequently, the large front window opened onto a view of emptiness and gloom for several months. 

Then I started seeing work being done inside the little shopspace.  Walls were patched, carpets were cleaned. A strange temporary sign went up in front, an ungainly geometric shape that spelled out DC’s full name - a name which initially seemed to me rather an over-reach, evoking much more than I thought the shop was likely ultimately to deliver.  Still, I withheld my acid judgments till I could really see what DC had to offer.  Maybe they’d surprise me.  Maybe DC really was the name that fit best.

Redecoration went slowly.  A handful of bracket shelves went up on some walls and one section got painted an outdated mauve.  Then, all of a sudden, DC was open: a large flatscreen had been mounted on a wall adjacent to the front window, playing an endless loop of fluttering asian girl-band videos heavy on CG flowerpetals and adorable coyness.  Butting up against the front window, a display table had been left stranded, covered with hyper-cute alarm clocks and makeup kits and pencil boxes.

Taped inside the window were color ink-jet printouts of specs for a dozen or so MP3 players and phones selling for more than I would have suspected they were worth.  The spartan wall-shelving held a variety of pointless-looking merchandise.  And in the middle of it all, adrift like an iceberg, was a glass counter, behind which sat a slender asian pre-middle-aged man in clumsy squared glasses and a puffy ski jacket.  The shop felt dramatically under-furnished; the temporary sign in front had transfigured itself without any visible enhancements into shoddy permanence.  It looked understocked, cloying, and creepy, and it was open for business.  Signs taped to the window in front, printed out on typing paper in 30-point times roman, proclaimed DC as a hot spot for holiday shopping. 

And then: nothing happened.  I passed that shop every day and i never saw anyone in it.  No one, that is, besides the proprietor in his invariable ski jacket.  He’d sit behind his counter, surrounded by garish toys and off-brand electronics, reading a magazine or watching saccharine videos.  Weeks passed and nothing seemed to change.  Though I lived on his block I never got a flier or circular inviting my patronage.  He started staying open later but it didn’t seem to improve foot traffic.  Maybe he was doing well on-line but on the street he was tanking. 

As I pass I sometimes see him peering out the front windows between the taped-up product listings and signs, eyes obscured by the florescent lights reflecting off his clunky glasses, his face a perfect blank.  I can’t figure what he might be thinking, but I know for sure what he puts in my head: DC is not the hot spot for anything I want.  At best, it is a warehouse of futility.  And goodness knows I’ve got enough of that already. 

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Valentine’s Greetings from the Artist in Residence

Update: jellyphotos on the photoblog.  Now back to our post, already in progress:

First, I know I’m in the middle of a series, such as it is - consider this a hiatus.  Second, I’m not usually much of one to make a big deal about Valentines Day, it’s a weird old holdover and I think it would be healthier to remove the erotic pagan elements from our national day of eros but hey I say that about the NFL too and look where it got me.  However, last weekend - no, two weekends ago, I’ll get to last weekend later - I did stumble into a valentine so honest and powerful that I actually withdrew from it a little.  That is a shame that I’m trying to rectify through recollection and recounting the story here as best I can.  Thusly and so:

It takes forever these days to get the kids out the door, and then they dawdle and poke along so’s we’d be making better time if I was just picking them up and chucking them down the street ahead of me.  But eventually we won out and all of us were wandering through Dave and Kim’s mature and stately neighborhood on a glorious pre-spring day.  You get those here - they’re a local specialty.  We’ll have a period of winter with days in the 40s and 50s, colder nights, and a wet pervasive wind that chills things down in a very personal way; there’s no question but that winter’s upon you, even if not in its fiercest possible guise. 

But then the weather breaks and you get a few days of real warmth and clear humid nights and a confused anticipatory budding of trees and shrubs that had been dormant two days prior.  You know more wet cold weather awaits you but for a while it’s all about the hot sun on your back and a delicious redolence around certain wise old trees.  It was one of those days, so glorious and bright that even the obstreperous passel of kids (four is a passel, right?) got with the program.  Everybody was out for a lovely walk in Kensington.

First we saw the house with the cool abstract sculpture out front - that was fun.  Then there was some other house that was cool, I don’t recall why; whatever, it was not a day for keeping notes.  It was just a beautiful pre-spring day with the munchkins and that’s all the thought I gave it. 

Dave and Kim obviously expected her to be there; but the rest of us had had no warning.  We had just come around another twist on another little hillside road to find yet another charming pre-war bungalow.  In front was parked an obviously inoperable vehicle, completely covered in alternating fields of blue and white paint full of swooping ideogrammatic symbols.  These symbols continued on the flagstones leading to the front door, on the door itself, and over the exterior walls of the house.  Pinwheels and spirit-catchers dangled here and there from sticks and strings.  Out front, a beautiful silver-haired woman was bidding a fond farewell to a small family that was just leaving her home; she turned to us with great joy and enthusiasm and, without missing a beat, welcomed us in. 

Her hair was full and straight and gleaming, brushing her shoulders in a distinctive, attractive, and very well-maintained style.  She wore a full-length velvet gown, maybe with a velvet cowl?, in rich, noble colors.  Her skin was taut and tan and positively glowing with life and vibrancy.  Her lips were a flawless carmine red as her smile beamed out at us, her graceful hands beckoning us to follow her as she led us toward her front doors, garlanded as it was with her peculiar painted swoops and shapes.

“It’s very lovely,” I mumbled as I got close enough to get a good look at the designs. 

“Do you know what it is?” She spun and stepped; the question was directed directly to me.  Her face was animated, delighted to be engaging another person. 

“No, I don’t,” I predictably, somewhat hesitantly replied.  I was getting - well, if not actually suspicious, at least a bit concerned about the direction things were going.  She’d inveigle us all into her house, get all artsy and metaphysical on us, and guilt us into buying a CD or something else I didn’t want. I was not sure I was in the mood to spend this gorgeous day with the kids inside some eccentric artist’s studio.  However, I seemed to be in a minority.  D and K were obviously in on all of this and tacitly had approved, and Kel seemed fascinated and was eager to be led on into the trap, with little Zach toddling happily behind her.  I started feeling a little pressured, a little resentful.  My sourness interfered with my perceptiveness.  I know there was much I missed in the rest of my visit but I’ll try to cover it as best I can. 

She answered me: “It is a language I am learning through meditation, a combination of hebrew and hieroglyphics.”

I looked more closely, didn’t see what she was getting at.  “Oh,” I replied noncommittally. 

She ignored my rudeness and spoke with each of us as if we were long-lost friends, locking eyes and sharing a passion she seemed both powerless and disinclined to resist.  She spoke on universal themes as she led us into her place, themes like overcoming difficulties, bearing no person ill-will, living life as a way to share peace and love and joy, and using her art as a means to articulate all the challenges and complexities of the human condition.  She drew us into her sitting room, decorated rambunctiously with plaster masks and incense burners and a plastic bin of cello-wrapped cards; there were flowers and crystals on the tables and sills, and photo-collages and paintings (seemingly self-painted) featuring our hostess at various and varied points of her life (because, she told us and I failed to follow up, “I have led an interesting life,” which, I now learn, involved the Egyptian and U.S. diplomatic corps). 

Canvases lined the walls and several more were propped up on the floor, generally cheerful and bright, with one tucked not very subtly in a corner all red on black - “this one’s about some not-so-happy thoughts, a dream really; I put it back here so it will not frighten the children.” The paintings were not overly refined, stylistically, nor overly sophisticated in content or theme, but each one was obviously a page torn from this woman’s soul and each was festooned with her fanciful script. 

Further in, in the kitchen space, she showed us her actual studio, around a corner from the front door.  I hovered at the entry arch, loathe to leave the exit out of sight behind me, as she displayed some of the hundreds of life-masks she’d made over her lifetime, pristine plaster castings that preserved and yet circumscribed individuality.  “Do you know how I do it?,” she asked.  We didn’t, so she told us, with a mysterious grin: “You keep just one eye open.”

We’d spent about ten minutes at her home before we extricated ourselves.  As we worked our way back to the front lawn I began to wonder if I had given her short shrift, if I’d have handled myself differently had I been alone or kidless.  She hadn’t asked for money; nothing in her home had a price on it that I’d noticed.  All I really know is that I walked away impressed with her total submission to her muse, and I’m more impressed as the days go by. 

As we left her home, Bibi (that’s her name, Bibi Barrett, and not the one who does special effects for blockbuster movies either) gave us a cheerful yellow and orange card, printed with a self-portrait of herself in pigtails with three geraniums growing from a heart where her nose should have been, and a gingham blouse that turned into hebrewglypics, and a script-printed poem that I will share here now because I think doing so honors her art more than I allowed myself to do while I was in her sanctuary with her:

Happy Valantine / Meditation 2.2.08 / Bebe Barrett

The purpose is a direction.  It is fulfilled in each moment that you are “on purpose.” It set your course in life.  Purpose is to be discovered.  Quentin Crisp: “My function in life was to render clear what was already blindingly conspicuous.” Purpose will be for the remainder of your life.  Robert Byrne: “The purpose of life is a life of purpose." Bebe: The purpose of life is to live, work, procreate and die!  False humility is a form of egoism.  Let loving, giving , joyful, playful caring… etc be your life purpose!"

Thanks, Bebe.  I think I am beginning to absorb your lesson, though it is hard to keep that one eye open as you recommend.  I hope to have another chance to sit and talk with you.  For the meantime, I am glad to be able to make your beautiful ideas a part of my valentine’s gift, to be distributed to all who give themselves leave to hear it. 

and with that, I am mostly done with valentine’s day.  This past weekend has been gargantuan - Saturday at the Monterey Aquarium with the Rosses, Sunday doing fun east bay outlet shopping (including the last bottle of “friction fix” massage lotion on 4th Street and a tasty tasty lunch at Vik’s), and Monday at the Discovery Museum’s Lunar New Year’s fest as well as a joyous and luck-inducing Year-of-the-Rat trip to Target.  I know there was plenty of other stuff too but I don’t have time to share it with you.  I intend to return to the Festival of Ephemera soon, I’ve got a few more items to toss on the pyre there, but right now I’ve got a nearly-three-year-old who needs more attention.  Catch ya later, yo.

Thursday, February 14, 2008

The First Day: T plus one

I can feel it coming on - can’t you?  YES it’s a CAVALCADE OF EPHEMERA!  Since that last post was about random stuff, here’s another one that really zooms in on the subject like only the borderline obsessive really can.  And a special welcome to anyone visiting via OINY; I appreciate the click-through seeing as I’m just an “honorable mention” but an Honorable Mention with a ball gag from OINY is still better than a gold medal with a… a nobel peace prize… help me out here people… or not.  Not, I get it.  Let’s just have the damn essay already.

(written a few days ago)

Today was the first day of the rest of my shirt.  Perhaps some clarification is in order.

In my t-shirt drawer I have a decent variety of t-shirt genres.  I have unmarked whites and solids, some of each with imagery or designs on them, a few sort-of-nice-ish ones, a couple high-tech ones for exercise, and a smattering of sentimental favorites - shirts with great histories or potential but something’s holding them back.  One of these used to be my hot-lime-green t-shirt from Hanalei Mixed Plate - it was a great shirt with a colorful, detailed iron-on that really brought back a great vacation, but I just couldn’t wear the sucker.  It was too damn green.  Well, a couple of years back I up and bleached the bejesus out of it.  Since then, it’s been just as comfortable, the design on the back has been just as vibrant and detailed - but the shirt itself’s been turned a low key pastel shade, reminiscent of the sod in a well-used park in August.  It’s a friendly, unobtrusive color and it suits me loads better than it used to do. 

I gave the same treatment to another such shirt last week, a longtime favorite design-wise but a little too in-my-face as to hue: the blue Mr Sparkle T.  The “blue” part of that description was an understatement - it was a booming vibrant color, like a cloudless sky above a high mountain - a blue that compares favorably to gemstones and mysterious pools.  A beautiful color.  A spiritual color.  However, way too intense a color for a t-shirt to make it to my regular rotation. 

The “Mr Sparkle” in “blue Mr Sparkle T” refers to the plastic transfer image covering the front of the shirt, depicting the mysterious cleanser box from an episode of The Simpsons in which Homer confronts a Japanese conglomerate that seems to be using his image for branding purposes.  “Why am I Mr Sparkle?,” he plaintively whimpers to their customer service rep.  The answer is less important than the question, objectified in the form of a spaced-out Japanese Homer on a box of household detergent.  That’s the box on my t-shirt - a shirt that has provoked open guffaws of appreciative recognition at low-brow coffeehouses both hither and yon. 

The peculiar thing about this particular piece of garment-borne graphics was that, being a parody of a Japanese product, it was generously larded with angular little marks.  I assumed they were Japanese characters, but they could have been some other language, or maybe they were just total gibberish.  They acutally looked a little like cuneiform to me, but what do I know. Whatever it was, it was unintelligible.  Unintelligible gibberish on a too-bright Homer Simpson shirt.  It was a great shirt, but it packed a little too much baggage for me.  It was consequently not in regular rotation, but it had its place in the drawer and even on my back occasionally.

One such day, when I dared to wear the Mr Sparkle shirt, came to my mind a few days ago as I snaked a little bleach from the downstairs neighbors in which to dunk that turquoise shirt.  I recalled walking down the sidewalk toward my home.  I was wearing the Sparkle T; perhaps I’d wanted to prove a point to myself or perhaps I’d run out of clean clothes.  They’re both reasonable theories.  At any rate, there I was, treading the pavement as dusk drew down. 

I’ve written before about one of my neighbors, sufficiently uncharitably that I’m loathe to link back to that prior post.  Let me introduce him now, briefly, as if the canvas were still blank: He’s a friendly old curmudgeon, whitehaired and hoar-bearded.  He hovers at his doorstoop, lying in wait for neighbors to waylay in a conversational ambush.  He’ll talk to anyone about anything - and when I say “talk” I usually mean “complain.” The weather, the traffic, the mayor, pesticides, his health, the neighborhood, his dogs… he was perennially dissatisfied and expressed it in no uncertain terms: German by birth, his pungently accented diatribes were liberally peppered with crudities and harshisms of the most robust European pedigree. 

His salty language and sourpuss demeanor would have been endearing if he wasn’t so intense about it that he made me occasionallhy uncomfortable, and so longwinded as to inconvenience me most of the rest of the time.  He fell generally into the category of a good neighbor I didn’t want to see too often.  His wife, curiously enough, was a small, very quiet Japanese woman.  We sometime rode the bus together, barely speaking to each other.  They both seemed like holdovers from some other, older world.  I still wonder how they got together. 

So I’m walking down the sidewalk, it’s dusk, I’m at ease and in my goofy turquoise Sparkle T.  Karl shouts down his front stairs to me and ensnares me in an irascible rant and I decide to indulge him and just let him have his say, which he actually wraps up pretty quickly.  Then he peers at my shirt.  “What the hell does that say?”

“Oh it’s from a television program, The Simpsons, I don’t know if you’ve heard of it....”

“No, but I’m talking about what’s on your shirt.”

“Well this was taken from the show....”

“I’m just trying to read it… Mee - sta - ru Spa - ruh - ku.  Meestaru Sparuhku? What the hell is that?”

The blue evening air nested in his unkempt mop of white hair and among his dense white whiskery stubble.  His face, craggy and pink, was smoothed by gentle light that erased his creases and wrinkles; his eyes goggled in confusion as he flicked his gaze from my shirt to my face and back.  “What do you know about this Meestaru Sparuhku, anyway?” His voice was almost accusatory.

I explained something about the program and the episode in question.  Part of it got through, even if part of it didn’t.  But he understood that it was a Simpson’s reference, and I understood it wasn’t just gibberish.  There was more writing at the bottom of the graphic, as well, but Karl couldn’t make heads or tails of that part.  It really did sound like gibberish the way he sounded it out, though that now seems unlikely to me.  I’m sure it means something, even if I can’t be sure what it is.  It’s a subtle difference, but it cam be an important one. 

All this I recalled as I bleached the turquoise Sparkle T down to a dusty robins-egg blue.  It’s a quiet color, easy for me to wear.  The shirt was successfully dis-intensified and has been consequently brought fully into the thick of my t-shirt rotation at last. And so, this morning, I wore it to the gym, a place where I traditionally wish not to draw undue attention to myself.  It fit me well, it felt soft and absorbent, it had a hilarious graphic on the front.  But most of all, for the first time, it didn’t shout its presence from across the room with its overly-aggressive pallette.  Then again, for the first time, had it been screaming, I’d have actually had some idea what it was trying to say.  Partly, anyway.  I think that’s decent progress considering where we started.  The new era of the Sparkle T has begun.  Today is the first day.  This is where you came in. 

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Honestly I Have Nothing To Complain About

I realize that things have been a bit quiet lately.  It means nothing, I assure you.  Actually, I’m loaded up with stuff to transcribe but I am short on patience.  Let’s see if a beautiful day completely off to myself helps me deal with this at all.  Bless you, Honest Abe.

I’ve had a number of upticks in the domestic comfort index lately.  A quick recap would include some key basic indicators that are bellweathers of far-reaching repercussions, such as:

* New Slippers. I’ve been wearing heavy rubber garden clogs around the house since my dog-owning days.  They were well-suited to my needs when those needs included taking Cosmo out for relief breaks at the greenbelt across the street, where mud was often the cleanest thing in which I’d step.  For some years now, though, that’s been a superfluous functionality for my lounge-related footwear.  The garden clogs never went outside anymore, and indoors they weren’t much fun.  They were cold when I put them on, and slow to warm up; they were noisy as I clumped around the house and they looked, well, like crotty old garden clogs. 

My problem was exacerbated by my constitutional disinclination to replace anything till it’s irreparably damaged, or otherwise utterly unsuitable for further use; those clogs were not really what I wanted but were capable of withstanding a nuculur blast.  They were like the twinkies of slippers.  I’d never wear them out.  I was in a quandry.

Last month I de-quandrified myself for less than a Hamilton and a quick ride on the bus.  I got some actual slippers, yo.  Cloth-covered, fleece-lined, soft-soled and budget-priced, buying them felt almost subversive when I had “a perfectly good pair waiting at home.” But once I got them home and slid my tired pods into their cushioned cloisters, all doubt faded from my mind.  Such comfort I had not felt for far too long.  I am getting used to it, slowly but surely, but I still feel a delicious illicit twinge every time I put them on.

* New Cup.  I don’t think I’m alone in my practice of keeping a drinking cup on the side of the bathroom sink.  Sometimes I like a bit of an after-brushing wash-out, ya know what I mean?  Sometimes I like something to drink with my nocturnal Vytorin or before I head out the door in the morning.  I have employed the services of a series of such cups over the course of my august career of washroom usage, some of which still have a favored place in my memory.  But they’re gone now, and lately I’ve not been too enthusiastic about the incumbent in that position. 

My bathroom cup: It was water-tight, of course, plastic and translucent - all key qualities I’ve traditionally sought in a sink-side tumbler.  My problem was, and I don’t complain about this too often, excessive size.  The damn thing was huge - like Czech beer huge, 24 ounces or so.  I can’t drink 24 ounces of anything on a bathroom-utilization basis.  It had about 16 or so ounces of absolutely excess hydrocapacity.  I had to gauge how high to fill the damn thing so I didn’t pour more water than I needed so there less left over to pour back down the sink. Still, it always felt a little lame to leave my cup three-quarters empty every time I used it.  Also, if I happened to visit the sink in the dark of night for a little rehydration therapy, it was entirely too easy for me to send it crashing to the tile floor as my blind and clumsy hands groped for the faucet but encountered instead its gargantuan mass. 

Of course, I was reluctant to replace it, because it was nowhere near the end of its useful life.  But eventually I came to a realization: I detested my bathroom drinking cup, and if its useful life was measured by its ability to satisfy my criteria for beverage containment, it has never had a useful life at all.  There was no reason to subject msyelf to it any further.  I resolved to replace it. 

That was literally months ago, and lord love me I could not find a suitable replacement till just a couple of weeks back. It seemed that every place I visited carried cups that were somehow wrong - dinky or opaque or glass or garishly colored with unsuitable appliqués.... When I came around an aisle at Tartget and actually saw a 12-ounce translucent plastic tumbler, I goggled in disbelief - briefly, and then I snagged one and brought it back home with me. 

It’s been on the sink counter ever since.  I haven’t accidentally knocked it over, or overfilled it, or anything.  It’s meeting my needs and goes no further.  It surprises me how satisfying that is. It’s a small improvement, but one that replenishes me the first thing every morning and the last thing every night.

* New Music.  The holidays always bring a big load of great music to my household, and this year was no exception.  The Trey-Santana concert completely shreds, the Knitters are blowing me away, and the New Mastersounds regularly cause me to embarrass myself on the bus with the sheer power of B3 funk.  There are others, too - too numerous to list… but there is one single song that is in a class by itself.

I’ve written before about music and musicians who have made a lasting impression on me, and there have been quite a few of them.  I’d have to say that one of the very most significant of those for me was Jethro Tull.  Maybe all you know of their work are the heavy hits that got all the radio play back in the day, but early Tull is some of the sweetest, most rhapsodic and lyrical music of the mid-seventies. 

Though I missed hearing any of those almbums at the time of their original release, I sure listed the hell of the them once I found out about them, about a decade later.  I memorized them.  I immersed myself in them.  They became, effectively, my internal soundtrack, and colored in the blank spaces between the black outlines of my life (to put it in terms I’d have found irresistible at the time).

I can finally, publically admit this intense relationship because in many important ways I’ve moved significantly forrward since then.  I listen plentifully to other music, and my life is a brocade of a much richer fabric.  I’d like to think that I’ve matured, so I can look back to my days as an unrepentant Tullhead with indulgent condescension.  Anyway, that’s how I felt about it till recently.

I told my dear friend the VHMaleJew, with whom I’d seen my first rock concert (Tull, Long Beach 1979) and shared my Tull crush in high school, that I’d just reacquired several classic old JT albums I’d lost for many years, and how nice it was to listen to the old throwback music again.  It felt to me like revisiting a favorite old nook in a beloved but long-neglected woods - a heartwarming auditory nostalgia, to be appreciated as a quaint keepsake of a less-sophisticated era.

VH got back to me with a new track he’d recently acquired in his omniverous musical foraging.  More Tull, but nothing I’d ever heard before.  It could have been on any of my two or three favorite old albums and would probably have been one of my favorite songs on any of them.  I won’t bore you with how it sounded, that sort of writing never makes any sense.  But I can tell you that the soaring harmonies and the melancholy lyrics, Martin’s plectrum and Ian’s voice unravaged by time’s indignities, all worked togeher like I’d forgotten they ever had or could. 

There were no memories to confound my appreciation of the music; there was no dulling of its genius through excessive familiarity.  I listened to those three minutes of music over and over again, but the feeling has yet to fade.  Turns out, I’d never gotten over that high school crush - I’d just gotten used to it.  Maybe I wasn’t as callow way back in high school as I’d thought I’d been.  It seems that I actually had pretty good taste about some things.

Up next: probably some complaints.

Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Getting Testy - UPDATED WITH RESULTS

THIS IS NOT NOT-A-TEST.  Results will be assessed in my own damn sweet time but I’ll share them with you because I’m trying to wreck the curve. 

So, it’s 10 pm and I’m just finally settling down for a little “me” time for the first time in the day.  All I want is a little mindless, or even positively anti-mindful, entertainment.  Bright colors, flashing lights, short words and broad gestures.  Bring it on back for me, American Gladiators!  A little Titan and Hellga action will ease my troubled soul, I know it in my heart of spandex, steroidally-enlarged hearts. 

OH.  TiVo’s “now playing” list includes no episodes of this particular piece of televised drek.  It’s mostly stuff for the younger generation.  Sure, the colors are bright and the words are short but there is no foam quarterstaff action, no rapelling wall of death, no travellator.  I’m not about to watch another Law and Order, I know that’s a path fraught with peril and immediate followup broadcasts.  I’m itchy and antsy in my brainpan.  Give me something calming.  AND GIVE IT TO ME NOW.

Oh, I have the final installment of Ken Burns’ The War.  That’s good television, right?  I’ll just watch an hour of it. 

You know what?  An hour of documentary footage about discovering concentration camps and taking the island of Okinawa in a month-long firefight in hellish conditions is not an appropriate replacement for an hour of action-parody footage about ordinary people trying to evade or knock over grotesquely overdeveloped swimsuit models. 

Signed,

Bad Night’s Sleep

test results will be posted when they become available.  Cool yer jets, corporal!

*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#(I rather like this)*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#

OKAY, results are in, and they confirm my darkest fears.  No, the Battle of Okinawa concluded about when Ken Burns said it did; no, American Gladiators is not based on a true story from my 8th grade gym class (not directly anyways); and no, it’s not about television at all.  However, I was hoping it would be.  It’s about RSS, and the feeding thereof.

I didn’t use to do much with the RSS feeds.  I would just surf my blogroll links and see if I found anything new.  Turns out, that was a crashing waste of time.  Most people don’t update their blogs as rapidly as I get bored.  I wound up re-visiting the same tired old posts way, way too often.  So now I’m a Bloglines addict, with my little menagerie of RSS feeds residing quietly on my desktop so I can check every little while to see if there’s anything new under the sun. 

I have occasionally noticed, in the meantime, that there’s some stuff on the Bloglines site I’m not really taking advantage of (of which I’m not really taking advantage, are you happy now) - their own blog, a clips service, things like that.  I did notice earlier today, though, that there was an option, were I to click on any of my subscribed feeds, to see a list of “related feeds.” I checked some out and generally they’re other blogs that have something in common with the one where I started.  Political blogs get politically related feeds; food blogs get foodie related feeds, and thus always to tyrants or something. 

So, I wondered, what are my related feeds?  Do I have any?  How does Bloglines figure out what sites are the Chucklehut’s long lost cousins or misbegotten sub-siblings or otherwise partakers in some piece of my blogtastic DNA?  I clicked on my own site’s feed (yes I keep a feed to myself and I know it’ll probably make me blind someday but in the meantime get off my back), navigated to “related feeds” and was profoundly disappointed.  Yes, I do have “related feeds.” And no, I don’t think I have much family resemblance to them AT ALL. 

There are 28 blogs, as of this writing, that are listed as my “related"s, though at least one of them is a duplicate (appearing twice).  One is called “Cuteness Overload” - lots of photos of kids and little fuzzy animals.  You gotta know, if you have spent any time here at all, that’s not really my main game.  Another, “The Invent Blog,” is about patents - how to draw the schematics for your application, what kind of cross-hatching to use, like that.  Okay, there’s some residual geeky interest there for me, but once again, very little overlap with my general content.  That leaves about 25 non-duplicated blogs that Bloglines thinks “relate” to this site.  What do they have in common?

I didn’t like what I found as the unifying thread.  Just to make sure it wasn’t a fluke based on immediate prior content I tried a new post - this post, above the string of doodlemarks up there - to see if I had invited some weird quirk of bloglining that fooled some blogbot into thinking I was “one of them” - one of the blogs it seemed to think “related” to mine.  I’d recently posted about Zach, then about taking the kids to Disneyland… okay, maybe I’m a little heavy lately on the kiddieschmaltz.  So I tried a new post that didn’t even mention kids, to see if it impacted how they thought I “related” to the b-sphere at large. 

The post about war documentaries and American Gladiators made no difference at all.  The same “related” posts came right up, and now I will tell you my gruesome, shameful secret: this blog apparently most closely “relates” to other sites that deal primarily with babies, in vitro fertilization, miscarriages, and other challenges to the genitive function.  “Celebrity Baby Blog.” “Thalia’s Fertility Journey.” “A Little Pregnant,” “Jenny From the Infertility Block,” “Inhospitable.” “Stirrup Queens and Sperm Palace Jesters“ - I kid you not.  OH MY STAGGERING GOD.  I’ve made none of this up.  How did I wind up here? 

I’m not linking through because I am truly not even interested.  Does public discussion of cervical malfunction float your boat?  Good for you - go on, do your blogging, your IVF, your blogging about your IVF… if that’s how you work out the issues that trouble your soul, I’m glad you live in a world where that form of exhibition therapy is available to you.  But that’s not what this blog is about.  It’s not even a subject I’ve written about on line.  It beggars my imagination why they’d want to lump me in with these people and their public proclaiming of private problems.  I try to keep it light and easy.  THIS IS NOT AN IN VITRO FERTILIZATION BLOG.

Oh great, that’ll probably generate another 30 or 40 new related blogs about fallopian prolapse or vasectomy reversal or something.  I think I’ll write to Bloglines tomorrow and ask what gives.  They say you can’t pick your relatives, but I’d like to think that this would be an exception.  Can’t you let me be “related” to some cynical diatribes about pushy bus riders, weird crap on the street, and funny typos?  Hell, I’d take the libertarians and the circus folk.  Just don’t make me hang out with the egg-implantation crowd.  At least, not exclusively.

Have any of you checked your “related feeds?” Are they remotely related to what you usually write about? 

oh screw it here are some cute kid pictures.  I guess they’ve got me dead to rights.

Tuesday, February 05, 2008

Shady Character

WE’RE BACK from a whirlwind trip to L.A. for my nephew’s bar mitzvah, which was excellent, and his reception party, which was superfun and delightful with the skating and the musical scavanger chairs game and the Greg Howard lookalike dj and all that, and of course the next day we hit up diddyland with the always-wonderful Patricia and even a few precious moments with the amazing Miss Mia (rides rid included Dumbo, rotating rockets, astroblasters (which scared zach very much indeed), toon town, autopia (Z steered so unerringly that K didn’t realize he was in control till the ride was nearly over), the train, nemo’s submarine, and then Z watched a parade while P, K and I hit the pirates (sis-evi and scott and little deelie were there too so Z was not abandoned to the crowd, no worries etc).) That was all that the munchkins could take; we got home monday afternoon.  However, such an extended exposure to Z-meister’s adorability index (which is significant) leads me to offer this tale of juvenile wisdom and self-awareness:

Zach’s needs as a toddler and as a human bean are pretty well met.  His diet is substantial, healthful and varied, and he gets plenty of exercise and playtime along with his reading and puzzles.  He doesn’t often ask us for much, though that will surely change soon enough.  However, for the nonce, he’s pretty content.  His demands, such as they are, are few.

I guess that’s why I noticed when he brought up the subject of me getting him sunglasses for a second time while we were out on a walk not long ago.  His Thomas-train shades were safely ensconced god-knows-where and the day was bright and sunny; his request had been reasonable the first time and was plainly plaintive the second.  I had my shades on, after all.  The poor shlump had a point.

We needed some bandaids or something so we were heading to the big local drugporium anyway - five aisles of unguents and quackery, a pharmapod in the back, and all the rest of the cavernous space filled with every variety of cheap seasonal, novelty, and household crap.  It’s not a place I like to shop but I have to admit that they almost always have something that I need - and sometimes, killer deals on good beer, too. 

So, sometimes this store had something really worth my money, I needed to buy something they carried, and Zach needed sunglasses.  The connection seemed obvious.  But as we tooled around the vast proliferations of the store, I was coming up short.  Soon we’d completed our little round of obligatory shopping and I still hadn’t noticed any baby shades. 

Turns out, kids’ sunglasses were neither with the sunglasses nor with the kids’ stuff; a friendly sales associate directed me to their spot sort of stranded on an endcap not far from checkout.  Initial prospects looked good - a stand of four racks rose from the floor, stacked and laden.  “There they are, boy!  Sunglasses ho!” He wheeled to the quarry and lasered in on his choice: “Dora!  Dora glasses!”

I was taken a bit aback.  This was not what I’d had in mind for him.  “Um, I think they have some other ones too....”

“NO, Zack Doraglasses!,” he cheerfully insisted as I dropped to my knees to find another option for him.  I figured we were in for some trademarked character shlock, but, dude, the Dora glasses?  And it’s not even that I have anything against Dora herself; I’m sure she’s a lovely person and a friend to animals and all that.  We don’t actually watch her program at our home but that’s no nevermind.  Show me some cool Dora glasses and I’m all over them. 

These ones, though?  Not so much.  They’re sort of moddish Jackie-Ovals with dark lenses set well into sparkly pale blue frames.  Dora waves impishly from the fore-end of each templebar.  They’re glitzy and garrish.  There must be another choice.

I paw through the rack and there’s bad news and good news: There is only one non-Dora option - but it’s awesome. Black wayfarer-types with blue-black reflective lenses decorated with a scattering of classic bat-signs.  They boy would look so tough in them.  He’d see they light of these shades, I assured myself.  He’d make the right choice if he knew what his choices really were. 

“Hey, check this out - Batman glasses!”

“No, that’s not Dora glasses. I like the Dora ones!”

“Well, these are pretty nice too; see, they’ve got bats, you can try them on like this - “

As I reached toward his face with the cool black kiddy shades in my hand, his wail stopped me in my tracks.  I was not going to get him to try on the Batman glasses.  He was committed body and soul to the sparkly blue Dora glasses.  This was his choice, and by gum he had made it. 

The three of us - Zach, Dora and I - made our way to the checkout counter.  As she rang up the shades, the bored-looking woman at the register offered Zach a wryly raised eyebrow, but her judgmentalism failed to penetrate his elation.  Dora glasses were nigh. 

As soon as the transaction was complete, I snipped the packing straps and set the glasses on his face.  His smile was so bright that the whole store needed shades.  Sparkly and fairy-hued and softly curvaceous and Dora-inscribed though they were, those glasses looked damn good on him.  I may not have been totally down with his choice, but maybe he made the right one without my help.  Z-bot totally rocks the Dora shades. 

Postscript: It was only a few days ago that Z pointed something out to us in one of his new favorite books.  It’s full of photos of little schoolkids doing crafts and play-acting, and one of them is wearing a classic Superman-"S" shirt.  The same kid appears inside the book and also on the back cover.  Z takes care to point him out - in duplicate - to whomever is reading to him.  He finally offered this explanation: “Superman.  I’m Superman.  I’m not Batman.  I’m Superman.”

I don’t think he’s ever seen either of them in action; certainly not the kind of full-bore explosions-and-fisticuffs action for which they’re best known.  Regardless, Z has made his allegiances: pro-Super, anti-Bat.  Again, that wouldn’t have been my choice, but it’s not my choice to make.  And it does ease my heart a little to think that he didn’t go picking the Dora shades indiscriminately and peremptorially.  He just went with whatever wasn’t Batman.  I’ve got to respect that kind of dedication to the team. 

Additional postscript: I don’t think I’ll ever have a better opportunity to share the following Zachisms.  They won’t really replicate the whole Zachtastic experience for you, but they’ll give you a sense of just how painfully cute he can be sometimes:
* Instead of saying “mine” he often says “myse” - as in “yours and myse.”
* “Me no like some.”
* He still combines “mommy” and “daddy” into a single all-purpose appellation: “mah-dy.”
* He really wanted a nutcracker around xmas time.  He calls them “crackanuts.”
* Also around xmas, he was very interested in all the angel imagery.  All angels were referred to as “that guy.”
* Any car resembling our car is “our car.” Our actual car is distinguished as “my our car.”
* If he’s completed any noteworthy act, he gives himself a little fanfare by singing “ta dah dah.” It’s the extra “dah” that kills me.
* If I make him laugh, he tells me of my comic genius by saying “You me funny.”
* Even though we just spent a whole day in his ancestral home, Zack continues to refer to the Disney rodent as “Pikamouse.”
* (My personal favorite:) If he likes something, he says it’s “good for me.” If he doesn’t like it, it’s “no good for me.” So, a plate of cauliflower au gratin: “No good for me.” An m&m he just found under the couch, half-eaten and linty, is “good for me.” Well, good for you, Zach!  Good for all of us!