Obligatory Year/Decade/Youth Ending Post

In which your humble narrator reflects with an uncharacteristic lack of sarcasm.

Count me out of the end-of-decade doom 'n' gloom being pushed hard by the media. I'm unsure where our intense, cultural need to engage in meaningless faux-retrospection at the end of a ten year period comes from, but it's taken a turn for the resolutely morose this time.

The list of complaints from the past decade is long: financial woe, Dick Cheney, Paris Hilton, Crocs, reality television, Ryan Seacrest,  unnecessary war,  housing bubble, Wall Street, Enron, assorted Kardashians, memoirs, W., et cetera, et cetera. I've run across the (particularly galling) phrase "end of innocence" a lot lately, usually pushed by boomer pundit types. If you'll forgive me for a moment, baby-boomers seems to be just a teensy bit obsessed with losing their innocence. You'd think it would be gone by now since they've proclaimed it lost every year since 1968. But I suppose when the twin foundations of your generational ethos are 1. incessant navel gazing and 2. buying stuff, you tend to stick pretty closely to familiar tropes.

But in an uncharacteristic spirit of optimism and (I hope) some perspective, I'd like to say that it just wasn't that bad of a decade. I got a college degree, turned 21, got married, ate lots of tasty things, had two marvelous children, turned 30, made progress on another degree, bought a condo, sold a condo, bought a house, read many interesting books, learned to play bridge, dressed better, traveled to interesting places and made many friends.

There was lots of crappy stuff too. I can't imagine a single friend or relative would ever accuse me of donning rose-colored glasses, but the relentless carping has gotten on my last damn nerve.

So if you're a nattering nabob of negativism, I'd like to cordially invite you to shut the hell up.

Bravissimo!

In which your humble narrator teaches his daughter to clap her hands and reaps the resulting plaudits.

Child #2 is at the point that she enjoys hitting things. I figured that she might enjoy learning to clap her hands. She certainly enjoyed it when I clapped for her, and even began to imitate it, albeit with closed fists. I slowly got her to unclench her hands and slapped her little palms together while she giggled until she figured out over the course of a few days how to do it on her own. She now claps happily to attract parental attention.

This afternoon I put her down on the living room floor with some toys and scooted off to the bathroom to use the facilities.

When I returned she applauded.

Snow Fail

In which your humble narrator climbs on ladders, scrapes ice off of things, and wonder where the hell the "warmer than average" El Niño winter forecasted by the National Weather Service is.

The Snowpocalypse was a bust. We got about 5 hours of cold rain on top of 12+ inches of snow on Christmas, soaking the snow, turning the bottom 2 inches to slush. Then it snowed another 3-4 inches on top of that. Then it melted some more and then hard froze turning every horizontal, and most sloped surfaces to ice. Needless to say, the slush/ice removal has been a real pain.

So I've been up and down a ladder unfreezing all the downspouts so that the ice doesn't push our new gutters right off of the house. Too much fun.

On a more positive note, I got a new cookbook from the in-laws for my birthday. My birthday was more than a month ago, but I just got the package from New Hampshire. Apparently the shipping label came off and it got sent to the dead letter office in Atlanta. (Which is funny because the only other dead letter office is in St. Paul... about 10 minutes from our house.) It's the Veselka Cookbook. So I made pierogies since they're exactly the sort of bad-for-you, fatty, fiddly food you should eat in the middle of winter to keep your coat shiny. They we quite tasty. Child #1 even ate a couple of bites the first night we had them. Of course, on the second night he declared that he didn't like them any more and would not eat them. He's still on a weird jag.

On a second, also positive note, Child #2 has decided to sleep through the night regularly. Thus, my power of cogitation and command of the lexicon have returned with vigor. Huzzah!

Snowpocalypse!

In which your humble narrator sharpens his ice picks, tightens the bolts on the snow rake and prepares to meet his doom. 

Snowpocalypse!* Snowmageddon!** Snowtal Annihilation! Snownami!

If we don't get at least a foot and half out of this storm after all the hype, I'm going to be peevish. Wife-a-roo is off work for four days. I went to the liquor store Monday and the grocery yesterday because I'm smart. See y'all after the thaw.


* This is actually being used frequently on local teevee.
** This too.

Winterfulness

In which your humble narrator ventures out onto the frozen tundra.

It finally warmed up enough to take the children outside to play in the snow. Sister-of-Me and I ran over to the University with children in tow so she could turn in a paper. Then we came back to the house promising Child #1 that he could play in the snow. In the car:

Child #1: I will shovel snow.

Me: We're going to play in the snow but we have to go inside first so you can get your snow pants on.

Child #1: I will not wear snow pants.

Me: Yes you will. It's cold and then your regular pants will stay dry.

Child #1: No! I will not wear snow pants. I don't like snow pants any more.

Me: You don't even know what snow pants are.

Child #1: (with increasing volume) I don't like them!

So we get home and I drag him crying into the house. And I rummaged through the closet and found the snow pants while he's veering ever closer to a meltdown. He looked up at them, stopped crying and said, "Snowpants are red. I will wear them." If only I had known that the color was of paramount importance.

But first, we had to wrestle the baby into her snowsuit.

Then we lost her since she camouflaged herself into the rug.

We found her eventually and then proceeded outside for much winterful fun.

The Fat Capitalist Pig Fascist Controller - Sir Topham Hatt

In which your humble narrator delves deeply in to the political machinations of Imperialist Oppressor, Sir Topham Hatt and his hegemonic stranglehold on the Island of Sodor.

Apparently we need to take a careful look at the conservative indoctrination of our toddlers. Sister-of-Me sent me a couple of links regarding a political analysis of Thomas the Tank Engine. The next day it was picked up as a story on CBC's As it Happens,* the Canadian radio news magazine show.

Exhibit A (from Canada.com: a bitchin' Canadian News Aggregater):

"Shauna Wilton, an associate professor of political studies at the University of Alberta's Augustana campus in Camrose, Alta., analyzed two dozen episodes [of Thomas and Friends] and found a strong conservative political flavour to the show.

Thomas inhabits a world where efforts to gain individual power or to upset the social hierarchy are punished, good citizenship is the ultimate virtue and episodes revolve around the morals of everyone having a role to play and the importance of teamwork and doing a good job, she says.
"One thing that's really clear when you watch Thomas is that there's a really strong social hierarchy and Sir Topham Hatt, the controller of the railway, is at the top and the different types of trains and characters fall below him," Wilton says."

Oh horrors! A children's program extolling the virtues of good citizenship and emphasizing the importance of having a role to play? But how will the little darlings learn to express themselves?

"It's a recurring theme on the show that Topham Hatt has a duty for the trains to fulfil and they try to make him happy and do a good job, she says -- a helpful theme for raising co-operative preschoolers, but not so good for teaching them to think for themselves or to question things as they grow.
On the show, any attempt by the trains to act on their own or go against orders has "fairly disastrous results,"she says, citing the story in which Thomas is temporarily replaced by another engine after he whistles impatiently at a police officer."

For pity's sake. It's a show for pre-schoolers. We don't really need to to teach them to think about things or to question authority BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT THEY DO. The idea that, as parents, we should be encouraging rugged individualism in 2-5 year-olds is unmitigated idiocy. There used to be a word used to describe a young child who insisted on always doing things his or her own way, never following the rules and not bothering to learn basic rules of manners and morals. That word was "brat."

Predictably the response I've read and heard to this analysis generally falls into the hyper-moronic, tabloid style that one sees in the U.K.'s Guardian. And that's too bad, because the issue isn't some stupid liberal trying to ruin the teevee for our kids. This issue is that this analysis entirely misses the point that the developmental differences  between children and adults demand that children's programs contain different messages. Toddlers need to understand the social power relationships in their family. And if that family is going to function in any reasonable way, the toddler better not be the one in charge.**

When people ask me about my political philosophy I tell them that I'm a liberal because I believe in progressive taxation and active government regulation of the markets. But I'm not into all that other hippie bullshit.

*Which you should listen to. 
** Because small children are insane.

Mailbag Monday (on Tuesday)

In which your humble narrator answers the missives of his adoring public.

Dear Rotten Baby,
Does a diet lacking animal products make one stupid?
                                          -Raging Ronda in Ridgecrest

Dear Ronda,
First of all, I think someone who can't spell "Rhonda" with the traditional "h" has little room to criticize other people's dietary choices. Are you ashamed of your Welsh heritage, Ronda? But seriously, a diet lacking animal products doesn't correlate with stupidity. My diet is completely free of animal products. Other people may be willing to eat cookies made by gophers, but I'm not.

Teacher,
i am an (imaginary) sad-sack undergraduate with innumerable vague personal problems including, but not limited, to the deaths of my seven grandmothers this semester. i haven't turned in my final  project that was du last week. Also i have skipped, like a lot, almost a third of my classes.  My question 2 u is: shouldn't i be able to postpone taking the final? i'm, like, not prepared. 
                   -Student terribly upset, probably in denial

Dear STUPID,
You have got to be freaking kidding me. I do not have either the time or the inclination to deal with your self-centered bullshit during the last week of classes. The time to be discussing how you can pass my class was last month. Where were you while I sat in my windowless office whilst tumbleweeds rolled past my door during my many office hours this semester? Also, perhaps if you're going to write an email trying to solicit pity you should 1. suck up a little, 2. capitalize the word "I." As for delaying your final: I'm, like, not prepared to do that.


Dear Rotten Baby,
Did you know that there were 1,808 baby girls born in the United States last year named "Brooklyn?" What's up with that?
                                                       -Slightly culpable bystander

SCB,
What's up indeed. My guess is that it's a lot of obnoxious hipster parents living in the mid-west and the west coast were trying be cool when they named their babies. It shouldn't surprise you that "Matilda"* is increasing exponentially in popularity as well. What's happening is this: having a child has become yet another way for people to "express" themselves and broadcast their social (and often economic) value to the rest of the world. Let's hope that many of those darling little Brooklyns grow up to be right-wing talk radio hosts, NASCAR enthusiasts or Joe Lieberman.

That wraps up this edition of 'Mailbag Monday," boys and girls. To have your queries, imaginary or otherwise answered, send an email to:
rotten.baby.blog (at) gmail (dot) com. 

*Really?