December 2003

December 29, 2003
I am a creature of habit. And so, if an acquaintance doesn't urge me to break one of my well-worn flight paths, I am often obliviously pleased to continue on my merry way. The verysame merry way I've continued on hundreds upon hundreds of times before.

So, when I was doing a little legwork on restaurants in my area and stumbled upon a website espousing the glories of a small Middle Eastern market near home, I figured this was divine Providence urging me to forgo the rote trip to Shaw's.

And I'm glad.

The place was a bit tight in the aisle, the uptight, olden richbitch slumming it with the immigrants was a smidge tough to take, and I had to distract the little girl with a package of cookies (Cookies. Good thinking, Ace. No mystery that they ended up in the basket prior to check out.) to prevent mass odd-foreign-produce hysteria, but, oh, the bounty.

I brought my menagerie of goodies that I had no hope of pronouncing up to the friendly cashier. He held up the package of what I thought was pita bread and noted, "These aren't the regular ones. These have pomegranate, [unintelligible], and [unintelligible]. I still think they're delicious." Hard to say, but I'm guessing he just assumed that since I was buying something, I actually knew what that product was. Ha. Funny guy. I nonchalantly bequeathed, "Oh. Um. That's fine. I'll, um, give 'em a try." Damn. Not nonchalantly enough, perhaps. I think he was on to me. Not another word until he waved "Bye, Boo Boo!" to the little girl.

Getting home, I confirmed they were not pitas, but big pita-like breads, paired, two-by-two, with a little somethin-somethin sandwiched in between. (I'm guessing pomegranate, [unintelligible], and [unintelligible].) I also discovered the large-scale raid I conducted on the baked goods rack was time and effort well-spent. Fucking yummy. Every item I absconded with is (was) fabulous. Immeasurably superior in every way to the Wonder Bread and Velveeta that still lie in wait at Stop N' Shop.

There are important lessons to be learned here. Some key, key takeaways, I'm sure. Morals of the story that include (but are not limited to): opening your mind to experience the flavors of other cultures, stepping outside your comfort zone from time to time, taking a little vaca from the beaten path. Of course, what's stuck with me is this: Although I may lack the belief system of a terrorist, I can still eat like one.

December 23, 2003
For those faithful readers yearning to find the perfect last-minute holiday offering for moglia - give thought to the 23 DVD set of The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (that feels more like a 30-ilogy) - Limited and Numbered "Claw Thine Eyes Out" Criterion Edition. It's a robust package. A robust package indeed. Among the highlights:

• Hot Hobbit-on-Hobbit action that never made it to the final cut
• More half-hour tracking shots of hairy-footed midgets climbing a fucking mountainside
• Bad, annoying, braying CGI fuckface that made The Hulk look like fucking DeNiro, but everyone will fucking cream their pants over the annoying fucking gimmic anyway
• Extended tracking shots of hairy-footed midgets climbing a fucking mountainside
• Behind the scenes footage of Magneto taping on his bad wig
• The full list of menus for all three shoots from craft services (look for "finger sandwiches" - a real highlight)
• Legoland squealing like fucking Ned Beatty in the Black Forest
• Fruitcake Ballbag and Samantha teabagging each other behind the castle - any castle (I just couldn't leave it at "Hot Hobbit-on-Hobbit action")
• Salmon, Samurai, Samhain and more bad guys/bad glowing fiery eyes with phonetically similar names that make following this mess far, far, far, far, far more trouble than it's worth
• Midgets. Hairy feet. Mountainsides. Rinse. Repeat.

I'd write more but my erection is partially blocking the keyboard. And I need to throw up.

December 15, 2003
My new band, Saddam's Spider Hole, plays T.T. the Bear's on August 28th. See you there.

December 5, 2003
Some time back (I suppose about a year ago), a friend who was visiting asked me a question about being a parent. He said (and I'm paraphrasing here (likely, poorly)), "Everyone talks about the wonders and magic of parenthood, but there must be something, something you hate about being a dad. What is one awful thing about parenthood?" The query caught me a bit off-guard, and I think I stammered something about how being woken at odd hours of the night for feedings was especially vexing or some other nonsense, but, truly: 1.) the little girl was never particularly troublesome at nacht, and 2.) those are my favorite hours of the 24 to be conscious anyway.

However, the question stayed with me long after it had been asked, sorta sticking me from time to time like a pointed pebble in my bunny slippers. And, after fair consideration, I think I discovered my answer.

The thing I hate about parenthood is having something I can't afford to lose.

People talk aplenty about their surprise at how becoming a parent has increased their capacity to love by a billion-fold, about how the love of a parent is infinite, impossible to measure, absolutely breathtaking in its breadth and width, about how their hearts fill to bursting when simply watching their child in slumber.

This is all true.

But, like all things, there is an equal converse. Where there's up, there's down. In? Out. Yin? Yang.

Light? Dark.

There is a terrible, terrible balance.

Having a love the strength of which has never been known, never previously experienced, in one's life means also having the knowledge of what would happen if the object of that love is taken away. This knowledge (in my case) has manifested itself in ugly, ugly imaginings that can be literally paralyzing. And, as such, I will never commit them to anything more than memory (and certainly not here). But my point (if I have one. Dubious.) is that becoming a parent actually changed something in me at an atomic level. 0 turned to 1 somewhere in my innards. Being the bastard I am, lacking all empathy and grace, my outlook on most things pre-little girl was a bit... harsh (Sean. Stop laughing). Truly, it still largely is, save for one tender, tender Achilles heel-ish spot that I would wish away if I could. Knowing the absolute vulnerability of life, human life specifically (fuck, say, lab rats, after all), during early years has made me susceptible to very, very strong emotional (and sometimes, physical), reactions to any situation that involves the endangerment of a child. Gone, flown by night, is my ability to slough off all misfortune of others like so much dead snakeskin. Once a child enters the equation, the stories I used to scoff at now make me feel like I'm trying to ingest a railroad tie by way of my rib cage. This sucks.

To wit: I hate flying. I may even have documented as much here, previously. Oddly, I also have a voracious appetite for reports of airplane-related disaster. I remember once giving my sister a videotape so she could record some program or other that I didn't have access to (lack of a sufficiently robust digital cable package being the likely culprit). She called me after and said, "I hope it's ok - I recorded over the show that was on the tape you gave me... It had.. um. A bunch of plane crashes on it?" (Damn. Now I have to wait for the Discovery Channel to re-run, "A Ton of Fantastically Disastrous Airplane Collisions Have Been Captured on Videotape and We Mean to Show You Them All!") It's a morbid fascination. I'm sure most people have them. (At least, that's what I told my therapist, to which she responded, "hm.")

So.

A few months back, I came upon an article on CNN.com that had an actual transcript of the flight recorder from a small plane that had gone down, killing all flight crew and passengers aboard. I could not resist. One of the first lines transcribed from said recorder was not, in fact, from one of the pilots. I had not taken into account the possibility that the equipment would record anything except the increasingly panicked conversations of the flight crew. And I would pay.

This line from the transcription of the flight recorder, this one word, made me exclaim in a forceful whisper, "Jesus Christ!" wring my hands (I actually fucking wrung my hands), push my chair away from my desk, and leave the office - ostensibly, to get some air.

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[young child - from cabin]: Daddy!

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Months and months have passed. Reading that now produces much the same response in me.

What do I hate about being a parent?

This.