on bad ideas

Do you ever have one of those thought which you just know is a horrible and rotten idea, the kind of thing which no one in their right mind would do or even condone, yet the idea persists nonetheless? My latest experience with such thoughts centered around my daughter.

Tuesday and Wednesday nights were not exactly quiet and peaceful in the TheMikeDuBose household. The progeny unit, for reasons which will remain a mystery until she learns how to talk (which should be some time next week, right?) decided that sleep was for chumps. Furthermore, she also decided that if she had to sleep, there was no point falling off unless she had spent an average of six hours, seventeen minutes actively fighting sleep...mostly by screaming and flailing. Now, for the record, I love the little bugger wholeheartedly, but the sleep ... um, difficulties ... did not have a positive effect on household morale in general.

Wednesday night, we gave her the supposedly calming and soothing bath, and by 9:30, my darling spousal unit went to put the progeny unit to sleep. I was catching up on chores, so I don't know exactly what was happening. Enough was clear, though, to realize that whatever was going on in the nursery, it didn't involve slumber, rest, or anything else we parental units might actively desire.

A half hour till midnight, I took over get-thee-to-rest duty so the spousal unit could lay down. The progeny unit, however, had no intention of doing anything of the sort, and she made this very clear in an extremely voluminous manner. She's a darlng girl, but if she's not happy or doesn't want to do something, she will let you and your ear drums know. Things got incrementally worse if I had the gall to, say, try sitting or even leaning against something. Somewhere after an hour of holding my darling, wonderful girl who insisted on flailing, screaming, and generally acting like a stunt double for The Exorcist, I had an idea.

What, I pondered, would happen if I matched her scream-for-blood-curdling-scream? If every time she yelled in my face, I yelled back in hers? If every time she flailed her body, I did likewise? It would, I decided, be tremendously stress-relieving (and, by this point, I had more than a little stress). It would be therapeutic in that it might take my mind off my tendinitis-weakened shoulder and inflamed back, both glowing after a few hours of pacing and rocking the little bundle of hellion-esque joy. Moreover, it would, to an outside observer, probably be pretty funny...imagine walking into a room and seeing a father holding his screaming daughter, leaning into her face, matching her scream-for-scream, decibel-for-decibel. Kid lets out an "EEERRRGGGGHHHKK?" Parent leans over, looks on in pride, and then lets out an even louder "EEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!"

Even in my mentally weak state, though, I realized such an action, while cathartic and possibly entertaining, very well might not be in anyone's best interest. Luckily, somewhere around 1:47, the progeny unit calmed down on her own and fell asleep. I kissed her, laid her down in her crib, and told her that I loved her in spite of any demonic fits she might display. I then crawled into bed for some blissful, restorative slumber, my thoughts of screaming directly in my daughter's face receding.

In case you're wondering: the benefit of this particular struggle/yelling session? A little over an hour sleep on each side.

somebody get me a doctor

A little over two months ago, me and the spousal unit welcomed our progeny unit into the world. Ever since then, it has been landmark after landmark: first time rolling over by herself (which actually happened her first night home), first sleep through the night (which hasn't happened since), first word (which sounded like "BBBBBRRRAAAWWWAAAGGGHHHH!!!" ... but very loud), first unbelievably scary diaper (the less said, the better), and first stock market tip (for a cryogenics company). This week, we have hit another landmark: first hospital bill.

Frankly, I'm glad. That means only a few more payments, and we'll own that kid outright.

They would've started rolling in earlier, but there were, of course, insurance mix-ups and bureaucratic snafus. At the hospital, they insisted our darling kiddo have the spousal unit's last name on all paperwork even though we were giving her my last name in real life. Of course, this led to rejected insurance claims, and I had to make separate calls to straighten out the mess with the facility's billing and the hospital's billing...which apparently are separate corporations in spite of occupying the same space/time coordinates. Stephen Hawking should be consulted on this anomaly.

We got the first actual bills yesterday. Honestly, they weren't as scary as I was expecting (which cannot, incidentally, be said about placenta). Unlike many of my fellow countrymen, I actually have pretty good insurance...which is one of the reasons I urge all you to join me in a rousting chorus:



The bills are, however, still curious. Both of them are from companies which label themselves "consultants," and this is frankly something I don't understand. If it's just a name thing, okay...hell, trucking companies are now "logistics corporations," so if a fancy title makes you sleep at night, I, as a former asphalt pigmentation application specialist, certainly understand. However, now when I see a statement from "Anesthesiology Consultants," I have to start wondering if it was an actual anesthesiologist whose services we used. Did the person who delivered my spousal unit's drugs really need to consult with someone? Will we get a bill for both actual and theoretical anesthetic services? How many medical people does it take to deliver an epidural?

Now...when is that damn diaper consultant gonna show up?

the second band

Time for a new mixed drink? Why, yes, it is!

• Fill a highball glass half full of ice
  
• Add one measure of cheap Scotch
  
• Add one half measure of Raspberry Schnapps
  
• Top with Seven Up
  
• Drink, enjoy, and wonder how you're going to learn a full set in one week before your debut in a new band
  

life in the swamp

Ripple effects. They're everywhere. Even, it seems, in rock and roll.

Way back at the start of the night, when my old band Analog Revolution played our first show, I remember being on stage, nervous as all hell, setting up my equipment. As I was running wires to my effects pedals, the guitarist from the third band started hauling his equipment through the stage door. He stopped and said, "Hey, cool homemade pedalboard, man!" Partway through the set, said guitarist hung out on the side of the stage for a song or two to watch me play. After we finished, said guitarist was the first person to come up to me to tell me we sounded good.

So went my first introduction to Sr. Bob Wobbly.

Bob started showing up to most of our shows...it was a sure bet that if I would look off the stage, I would see his ball cap. When his first band started not playing out frequently enough for him, he started another. When he got bored, he recruited my awesome singer and bassist for a third band. And when he found out Analog Revolution was breaking up, he asked me if I wanted to join him in what would be his fourth band. The man, it must be said, really likes music.

A few months ago, when his second band (the awesomely named Black Swamp Rats) were opening for Analog, I realized they were (in all deference to Kitty Glitter and , both of which I like) my favorite band of his. When I booked Analog's final gig, they were the first band I asked to play with us. And during that final gig, I ended up dancing/fake moshing/hurting myself when they were blasting on stage...all the while thinking "man, I'd love to play with them."

Now, Bob and I had already decided to play together, and I had thought long and hard about the new band...how we would sound, what we would do, what the theory behind our approach would be. I wrote about 11 songs, recorded eight demos, and had been (sort-of) working on lyrics. Only one problem: we had nowhere to practice. I would've offered my house, but there's not enough space...plus rock band rehearsals and 2 month old kiddies don't mix. We couldn't play at Bob's place, because he now lives above a pizza joint. While the band had good songs, a good approach, and would itself have a lot of up-side, it was also looking like that potential would take ages to reach...and it might be up to a year before we could actually play out.

Wednesday night, I got a call from Bob asking me if, rather than start a new band, I would rather just join the Black Swamp Rats as a second guitarist.

I thought about it for about half a nano-second before saying yes. I told him (honestly) I was honored. If he would've asked, I would've told him I would've rather played with the Swamp Rats than anyone else around...particularly since The Hold Steady continues to not call for my services.

So it's official: I am now a Black Swamp Rat. So we're going to meet Monday and discuss strategy. I know not all of the songs we wrote for the 4th Bob band project (which, incidentally, was gonna be called The Bombastics) will work for the Black Swamp Rats...but hell, I don't care. They have a definite sound, and it's one in which I think I can easily fit and even enhance. Plus, I know they kick ass...so it should be really, really fun. Hell, the drummer's already sent me a "welcome to the band" e-mail.

Ever since the call, I have been slightly giddy. The last two nights, I've had problems getting to sleep because my mind won't quit working on guitar parts. It's gonna be good.

empty houses

It's just a line from your old town

where we're still drinking to the times

when you were around

Last night, I told a friend that we were at what was both the best and the worst party I've been to in a while. The two of us were on the front porch swing, as friends inside listened to music, talked, and drank to our friends who were leaving the state in the morning.

One of my friends got an awesome tenure-track job in Washington state, so both of them decided to hold an empty house party last night before getting up this morning for their cross-country trek to their new home, to their new lives. Naturally, I am truly happy for them both. You gotta love new adventures, and you particularly have to love when someone's career path/dream pans out...because that is increasingly rare nowadays. So a large part of me is thrilled that life was going in a good direction for them.

I also realize how greatly enriched my life has been by knowing both of them. Without these two, I wouldn't have played in a band, got to know several other people, had so many fun nights listening to music together, talking at the bar, hanging out on our back porch, discussing new (to me) ideas, generally and genuinely connecting with two wonderful people.

So there is a lot of good here. Yet they're still leaving my life. That street, that house, they will now just be another addition to the increasingly long list of places where friends of mine used to live.

I've mentioned before that my father was in the military. Even though he made great efforts to try and give us as close to a normal life as he could, there was still a lot out of his control. He might keep us at one base for five years, but our friends would still regularly move out. Starting school each year was starting over. Who would be here this time? That person who you used to talk to during recess? They were now in Guam, or on the west coast, or somewhere else...it didn't really matter where, because the only real important thing was that they were far from where you lived.

When my Dad retired, we moved to his hometown of Jacksonville. The first immediate difference I noticed (apart from the hellish heat and humidity) was that when I went to school that first day, there weren't a bunch of people who were looking for new friends because their best friend's dad just got transferred to the other side of the world. No, everybody had a full array of friends, because they had known the same people all their lives. That, it seemed, was the big difference between being the kid of a military man and being the child of a civilian.

I lived in Florida for fourteen years, and I kinda got used to knowing the same people for years on end. When I entered my doctoral program, though, it flung me back into the realm of short-term friends. Although the people I have met up here are the best friends I've ever had, I still have to brace myself for their eventual departure.

Each year, the list of places where friends used to live grows, and simple strolls around town become an exercise in mental three dimensional archeology. I walk down this street, where my friend is now in Minnesota. This house is one a few people I know shared; now they are in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Maryland respectively. I turn down another street. My friend from Romania used to live in this apartment complex. I walk past another house, and I have no idea if the dear friend who used to live here is permanently a resident of Michigan or of Norway. I head home and pass the complex where my friend used to live who died unexpectedly this past year.

It's wearying.

I had these thoughts last night, as my soon-to-be-departing friends were holding what was admittedly a righteous party...good music, good friends, good food, good drink, good conversation...yet it was already a prelude to an empty place where yet more departed friends used to live.

late night realizations

One of the awesome gifts someone got my progeny unit in one of her thirteen baby showers is a stuffed bear which plays sounds designed to calm or keep a child asleep. Choices include waves crashing on the beach, rain, a mother's heartbeat (recorded in utero), and whale songs. It's honestly pretty cool...you push a button, and it provides an hour of sounds while you (supposedly) get your urchin to sleep.

Last night/way too early this morning, my progeny unit woke up. Spousal unit fed progeny unit and then handed her off to me (seeing as I am the daytime caretaker unit and she has to work). Progeny unit, though, was decidedly un-tired. I had every trick in the book (literally; someone just recommended The Happiest Baby on the Block, and I was pulling out every bit of advice, to relatively decent effect), but that little kid was fighting sleep with all she got.

After three hours, several sleep sound machine re-sets, and two failed feeding attempts, she finally went back down to la-la land...and in her crib, no less! I then collapsed in my own bed. As I lay there trying to shut off my mind, I could still hear the whale sounds playing from down the hall. They say whale songs are language of a sort. This immediately set me thinking: what exactly are these particular whales saying? What if these whales are trying to corrupt my kiddo? What kind of insidious whale-messages exactly am I unwittingly piping into my daughter's room?

What if these whales are terrorists? Drug addicts? RIAA supporters? Karaoke singers? Tea partiers? Baseball fans? What if they're evil in some other way, like maybe being Rachel Ray fans? You see? We really have no idea what they're saying...and this is something I never considered until I became a father...more specifically, a father awake at 5am, running on two hours of sleep.

Yeah, sure, they're probably just talking about plankton availability...but can we really take that chance? What about the children? Won't someone think of the children????.

I am, by the way, realizing exactly how much I now need coffee.

sing and scream

I have a seven week old child who, in spite of being loving, lovely, loved, and generally sweet, also in fact...well, she's a seven week old child. This means that, no matter how awesome she might be the vast majority of the time, there will inevitably be anywhere from 1-7 daily screaming fits/meltdown periods lasting anywhere from five minutes to three hours apiece.

I was, on some level, prepared for this. People, particularly pernicious parents, went out of their way to describe the screams I would face. Our parenting classes even had a video about this called The Blue Period...which inexorably built to the moral: no matter how much your kid might scream, don't shake them. Somehow, they left out telling us we should not drop-kick our kid, put said child in the microwave, slip in vodka into her bottles, or so forth (which, I guess, were inferred to just be common sense, unlike the shaking thing).

The thing is, though, as much as one can intellectually prepare for events, sometimes there is no substitute for actual experience. When my lovely, beautiful, exceptional-in-every-way child started to get upset, I expected screams. I did not, however, expect Exorcist-level wails...or, for that matter, the accompanying spinning head.

I do all the standard things to calm her down. I cuddle, talk in reassuring tones, pace around, perform a sacred hoop dance. The thing that tends to have the most effect is (to the extent anything actually helps, that is) singing to her. I sing Wilco songs. I dive into Son Volt, Neil Young, classic rock, indy rock, all kinds of things. But what, you might ask, has the highest "soothing loud babies" quotient? What artist works the most wonders on my kiddo?

It's The Eagles.

Seriously. My kid is, more often than not, soothed most effectively when I sing Eagles songs to her. My progeny unit finds The Eagles's Their Greatest Hits: 1971-1975 to be both calming and relaxing. She seems to like "Take It to the Limit," "Lying Eyes," "Desperado," and "Take It Easy" above the others. While I'm not saying they're the key to Magical Sleeping Baby Moment, more often than not, if my girl starts to come down from a meltdown, I've been singing one of these four songs to her.

This is actually fine by me. While I know how fashionable it is to utterly hate The Eagles, I've always kinda liked them...and I am now old enough, secure in my identity, and generally don't give enough of a rat's tuchus to feel bad about admitting that in public. I know this puts me at odds with many of my friends (including my old bandmates, who, when I suggested doing a punk version of "Lying Eyes," looked at me like I just suggested adding cannibalism to our stage show). I can't tell you why they hate them so much--probably something to do with irrational country music hatred--but ultimately, I don't care.

As long as their songs help my daughter take it easy and dry her crying eyes, thus giving her a peaceful, easy feeling, I don't care if The Eagles give my friends a heartache tonight. I will continue to like The Eagles and encourage my daughter to do the same. If my daughter is crying as if suffering from a heartache tonight, I will sing, sing, thus, in some small way, giving her the best of my love.

Although, if the singing quits working, one of you might need to bring me a tequila sunrise or something.

time keeps on slippin'

A few months before the "blessed event," I was in my office during the last week of classes, clearing up some last minute tasks...damning students, filling out paperwork, and the like. One of my former bosses (who, once upon a time, had the temerity to actually hire me) stopped by, and we briefly chatted...the "brief" bit being a necessity, as former boss's new position has her transferring from being merely busy to being one of the busiest humanoid beings in existence, apparently. She asked, among other things, how the (then still in-progress) pregnancy was going.

Eventually, she got that demonic look on her face (I know it well; she was my boss) and asked "Do you know what they call the first six weeks after delivery? The worst part of the pregnancy!" She then vacated, leaving me alone to face this portent of doom (as she is want to do).

For the longest of time, I would hear similar warnings about the first six weeks of life as being hell-like. I would, it seems, never sleep, never see anyone, never have a moment of sanity. We were bombarded with warnings, threats, hellacious laughter. This taught me, as I recounted earlier, that parenthood tends to turn parents into sadists...at least when around parents-to-be.

But there was always that time element. Six weeks. A month and a half. Conquer that, the implied message of hope claimed, and you can conquer anything.

Yesterday, our progeny unit hit the seven week mark...and I've been noticing that, for the last few weeks, the words of warning from prior parents have been changing as our baby ages. First there was one simple "oh, if you get through the first two months, you will be fine." Then someone claimed 2-3 months. Next, I heard "half a year, and it will get easy." Some other well(?)-wisher told me it would be the first year.

What are you bastards doing to me? Enough with the threats! Just come on out, tell me it gets easier after the 22nd year, and get it over with!

daytime caretaker unit diary

Today, I move from just being a paternal unit to being...(pause here for dramatic tension)...a sole daytime progeny caretaker unit. It is an awesome amount of responsibility...not to mention being a lot longer to type.

For the first seven weeks after d-day, the maternal unit was here with me, and we shared the joyous act of caring for the progeny unit. Unfortunately, maternal unit had to go back to work. We would've loved to have her here longer, but she's part time and therefor doesn't get paid when she doesn't work...and we are not, unfortunately, independently wealthy. While I perfectly understand the "you gotta work to get money" thing, I don't really get the whole "parenthood is blessed, but you don't deserve time with your new urchin unless you're rich" thing. A while back, I found out (via this post on the awesome Sociological Images) that the US is one of only six countries worldwide that don't require employers to offer paid maternity leave (go US!). I guess we, as a country, think it's either work or parenthood, but not both. I will agree with my female brethren: this just don't seem fair.

Fortunately, though, I have a good job. Yes, it's outside my field; yes, I have to read a lot of papers (of the "welcome to college" student quality level); and yes, I'm pretty just a worker bee/university slave, but there are real benefits...the chief one (relevant to this conversation, anyway) is my semester of paid parenthood leave...hence me being the daytime daddy.

Naturally, this is gonna dominate my thinking for a little while. However, I promise not to go all "oooh, you should see the adorable thing my kiddie did today" on you. No one wants to read that. Besides, without the accompanying possibility of spit-up, you would only be getting half the story anyway.

But it does mean a few things relevant to our time together, mainly: in between the feedings (one so far today), diaper changes (several, with one in particular bordering on "great googly-moogly" territory), meltdowns (one so far, but that was solved by me rocking her while singing The Eagles), and diaper washing (in progress as we speak...all hail the high efficiency machine...as I would really hate to drag these suckers to the creek and beat them between two rocks), I will finally find time to blog again. This will likely happen mostly, I suspect, during naps (hers, not mine).

Now I just gotta learn to type quietly.

The Sleeping Baby

You know what it's time for? Yepper, a new drink! I call this one "The Sleeping Baby":

• take a highball glass/juice glass/sippie cup and put in a few ice cubes
  
• add one measure of vodka while thinking of the gulags
  
• add one measure of wild strawberry liqueur while thinking of the forests
  
• add a half measure of raspberry schnapps while wondering why "raspberry" has a "p" in the name
  
• top off with orange juice
  
• stir, drink, relax, and watch your formerly sleeping child squirm
  

on establishing a permanent record

Because of the blessed nature of being in a really good band, I am and can fully conceive of myself as a musician. One of the things that musicians do (other than annoying their family, friends, passers-by; put on the facade of a monster ego to cover up mass insecurities; and make a lot of noise in loud venues populated by intoxicated people, some of whom would rather be either dancing or playing bar-top trivia games) is record. Hell, even if it wasn't part of the standard musician playbook, I'd want to establish a permanent record of my music if just for the "I must live on forever! MWAHAHAHA!" part of my personality alone.

So, how is the recording process? Surely, you are thinking, it must be fabulous getting the chance to finally document your material. How could it be anything other than interesting taking sounds in your heat, moving them from your fingers, into steel strings, through magnets, wire, effects, tubes, speakers...all in concert with other musicians who you love and trust? How could this not be utterly and completely fascinating? Enthralling? Transcendent?

Well...

I still want to eventually do good professional recordings one day, to have on tape (or some digital facsimile thereof) a version of one of my songs which approaches the version in my head. But, if my experiences are typical in any way whatsoever, I am not sure how bands can spend more than a few weeks in the studio and come out with their sanity. How, perchance, might someone be a member of Boston or Guns N' Roses? How could you survive multiple years in the studio working on the same damn collection of ten songs?

The above, though, was my current band's attempt to just do some raw, mic-in-the-room recordings, and there are occasional technical hiccups in any situation which have to be addressed...so, for the record, we are not usually sitting around, reading, or passed out while someone twists knobs and hits things. We are, however, responsible for each other's feelings, attitudes, and opinions, so we have to give each other a lot of space...which means, rather than a "let's bust out our set in an hour" session, recording tends to be play once, wait while people listen and judge the take, and play again...albeit twenty minutes after the previous take. I understand the lack of flow, but it is still an issue for my level of playing and of interest.

Doing it on your own, though, is not really any quicker or less aggravating.

I have mentioned before that, after Analog Revolution goes away, I have another project in the works. In this new band-to-be, I will be shouldering a decent amount of the conceptual and songwriting load. Well, in the week before the progeny unit showed up, I decided to assemble some rough demos at home...so the other band members would (1) be able to hear the riffs again (since, while I was in the final stages of urchin-readiness, we haven't been practicing) and (2) have a good idea of the structure and overall sound floating in my head.

Stage one was to find a drum machine program...as I possess neither the massively expensive drum set nor the coordination required to play one. There are tons of good programs out there, and some came very highly recommended....but they all cost money, and I am, if nothing else, relatively broke. So I did some arduous searching (well...I googled it) and settled on a nice open-source program.

I then had to learn the program. Operating the software was not really the issues...the program I found is relatively intuitive. No, the difficulty is simply I don't know how to play drums. True, I have listened to drums all my life, and I have known many drummers. Apparently, though, I only gained a slight theoretical knowledge of their craft in the process of hanging out with them. Osmosis, I guess, only gets you so far. Ultimately, I learned the biggest thing to be gleaned by hanging out with drummers is an increased proficiency with profanities.

It took a few days of messing with the program, but eventually, I attained a certain proficiency programming drums. More than anything else, I was amazed by the innate mathematics involved in drumming. Fractions in particular. One song in particular tripped me up for a full day before I realized the drum part needed to be in triplets...which changed the mathematics considerably. This is all funny, because I never really saw any of my drummer friends as math savants...but I guess there's also some intuition at work.

After the drums were programmed, I then set out to record the guitars...which, as I have been playing guitar since 8th grade and had written all the songs in question...well, this should be no problem, huh? Should be "I'm gonna knock out ten guitar tracks, assemble a guitar army, be the envy of Brian May," right? Not the case. When we were doing the Analog Revolution recordings, I was chagrined to find we would only end up with three songs recorded in a three hour session. Why, I wondered, couldn't we speed up the whole process? Hell, Black Sabbath recorded their entire first album in twelve hours.

Wrong again, idiot self. When I recorded on my own, I still did about three songs in a three hour session. I'm not sure if the recording process makes me over-think everything, or if I'm really just that tremendously sloppy/imprecise of a guitar player...probably the latter, which is a tremendous blow to my ego. Even though I was in control of all aspects of these fledgling demos, it still took me forever to do a job that was simply...good enough. Sigh.

I'm now realizing that I need to get back to the live element. I'm much better when there's immediacy between myself and the band, between the band and the audience, when we can get locked into the energy, the emotion, the pure awesome sound, and just let the music take us where it needs to go.

That our audience is drinking and, as a result, has lowered expectations is just a bonus. Yeah...that's what it is.

delayed notification

I've been understandably busy, or I would've posted about this earlier, but in case you haven't heard from other sources:

World, please say hello to Sylvia Emily DuBose. She arrived on Sunday, 6/12, at 3:35pm, weighing in at 8 pounds, 14 ounces, measuring in at 22". Please be good to her and help her develop into the awesome person she is destined to become.

bugs redux

Remember the Great Bee Invasion of aught-ten? Well, last night, as I was gaining a few brief hours of passing-out, the spousal unit, hauling the progeny unit, came in exclaiming "bugs!"

I wasn't sure if this was deja vu or flashback. I also suspected sleep psychosis, as the progeny unit, who had been on her best behavior until 11ish, decided to forget how to sleep, rest, or be quiet.

I stumbled out to the living room and saw a few ants with wings on the corner. I grabbed our eco "safe for kids and pets but still stinky" bug killer and returned. I killed the little buggers. I looked down. There were twenty to thirty more. Assassination. Looked around. Thirty ants on the door. Similarly dispatched. I then went outside and soaked the porch, the window frames, and pretty much the corner of the building.

This AM, after finishing the morning pass-out session, I called the landlord, who, after hearing the word "newborn," responded with due haste. I then went into severe clean-up mode...and when I moved our corner lamp, I found even more bugs, this time with ugly-ass bug eggs.

First the bees...then the ants. I'm wondering if I have watched so many fifties monster movies, I've unwittingly entered one.


(Yah, I know. I'm brimming with news, but there is no time/amount of consciousness to tell the accompanying stories. Soon, though...and if you're on Facebook, follow "Sylvia Emily DuBose"...I will be posting videos and photos before too long.)

waiting, art, and science

Yesterday, I learned about the limits of both art and science.

As y'all undoubtedly know, the spousal unit and I are expecting an urchin. Said urchin was actually due Wednesday. Mighty isn't here yet, though. We're hoping that urchin's lack of punctuality doesn't carry over into the high school years.

Yesterday afternoon, I was introducing the spousal unit to the under-appreciated pleasures of The Adventures of Briscoe County, Jr. when she started to feel...it was less a cramp and more a contraction. Eureka! Mighty might actually be beginning preparations for the debut appearance!

So, having read all the books, website feeds, and such, we knew, in order to figure out when we needed the services of our birthing professionals, we had to start the counting, the collection and collating of data. Everything, including the advice of doctors, told us to head to the hospital when contractions hit five minutes apart. I grabbed a pad of paper and pen, and I started writing down times. Contraction one: 1:45 pm. Contraction two: 2:06. Interval: 21 minutes. We stayed at around the 20 minute mark for a few cycles. The 15 minute gap lasted about two hours. Then 10 minutes...then 7 minutes. When we had a couple of consistent 5 minute marks, we made some notification calls & texts, got dressed, and went to the car to start the voyage.

After getting the car parked, getting up to the third floor, and finding the maternity ward (we've been there before, but it's a hospital...it's not tremendously diverse in decor, so the hallways have the distinctiveness of Jeffrey's Tubes), we found out that the female population of Toledo (or at least a significant portion thereof) must've decided last night was the perfect time to spit out a child...the maternity nurses were slammed busy. There was no room at the Inn, so to speak (well, no bed in the triage), so we were pointed to the waiting room. The spousal unit read, I watched NCIS...that is, when we weren't pacing around the waiting room, spousal unit panting, me trying to be kind and sympathetic (as well as anyone who will never personally experience a contraction can be).

After seven hours of contractions and an hour and a half in the waiting room, we were finally shown to triage...which was nowhere near as cool as even MASH made it appear (either the show or the superior movie). They had a radio playing. The song was "How Long Has This Been Going On?" I found this hilarious, but I was very unsure if I should or should not point out the humor to the contracting spousal unit. Score one, though, against the power of art to uplift.

After monitoring, checking, waiting, testing, more monitoring and checking, our doctor (who happened to be on hospital duty) came in to see the spousal unit and immediately declared the spousal unit looked too good, calm, and restful to actually be in labor. We were given a choice: we could either wander around the halls, hoping that a few hours of walking would spur true rather than false labor...or we could go home and wait for the actual labor to start. I innocently asked how we would know when we (well, the spousal unit) had real contractions, real labor if the counting obviously didn't work (as we did the 5-minute-between-contraction thing, which did not lead us to delivery as advertised). Our doc said the spousal unit would just know. I wasn't sure if this was an appeal to the sacred mystery of female intuition (of which men will never understand) or a Yoda reference. Score one, though, against science and procedure.

Yeah, I know it's still early in the process...but this pregnancy/delivery thingie is, to this point, confounding. Oh, well...I'm sure it will just get easier.

infants and mad scientists

It all started off with technical incompetence. It ends with mad scientist laughter.

When the spousal unit and I got our ultrasound photos of our impending bundle of joy, we decided we wanted to share our images of the little urchin with our friends...never mind that they looked mostly like blobs at that state. Figuring e-mail would be the easiest (not to mention most science-fictiony) way to share the shots, I took the images with me to work. I scanned the photos, tried a whole bunch of settings, but I guess I suck, because the scans were blurry...I mean, even blurrier than ultrasound photos of a few-month-old fetus normally would be. While the department's copier/scanner is great for making pdfs, it's apparently not up to image scanning....or, what is far more likely, I'm just a bit of an idiot when it comes to using it.

So, on the advice of our department secretaries, I hunted down the building's IT guy, and he was happy to scan the ultrasound shots for me. He also heartily congratulated me and told me how happy he's been after having a daughter. He treated me, a complete stranger, in a way which was, upon further reflection, almost like being welcomed into an exclusive group.

Unfortunately, out of those people I've told about Mighty who have their own kids, he's one of the few who've responded in this way.

Usually, I will tell my parent friend that the spousal unit is expecting. Then the lights will dim. Color will seep out of the room. Thunder will crack while lightning flickers simultaneously. And my friend will get that specific evil look in their eye. "Congratulations," they will say, and, following an ominous pause, "your life is going to change in ways you've never suspected."

They warm to their subject. As Tesla coils begin to flash, as the air fills up with the smell of burning ozone, the vibrations of ancient vacuum-tube fueled machinery, the unearthly whine of aertherphones fills my ears. A subtle vibrato creeps into their voice. "You will never get a good night's sleep again. You will hear crying, screaming, gnashing of teeth..."

"um, I don't think my urchin will come out with too many teeth."

They ignore my appeal to logic. "Your child will most certainly be colicky...the crying will never stop. There's nothing you can do. Waaaah. WWWWAAAAGGGGGHHHHHH!!! It's all you will ever hear. It will permanently implant itself in the deepest recesses of your brain."

"Um..."

"And then there's the future. Have you planned for the future? Do you have a good daycare lined up? Have you started on pre-school applications? Do you know in what your kid will major in college?"

"I think I have a little time to..."

"And the money. Did you realize how much babies cost? There's food...clothes...furniture...diapers...office supplies...workout equipment...drum sets...dictaphones....All this costs money, you know."

"Gee, really?"

"And then there's the time. Kids take time. You have to be with them. They always need something. They demand your attention. This means your life as you know it is over. You will have no more social life. No one outside of your work will ever see you. You will have no time to go to bars, see movies, talk to strangers, eat food, use the bathroom."

"Have you considered decaf?"

"It's changing! Everything in your entire world is over. It's all changing. It's all about the kid. This means there's no more room for you...in anything...ever...BBBWWWWWAAAAAHHHHAAAAAAHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!"

At least this has been my experience.

heading out to the country

Whenever I ask my classes about music, I have at least one (and often many more) who claim "I like every form of music...except country."

I don't believe them, of course. They cannot possibly like absolutely everything. For that matter, they cannot even have experienced a significant sampling of every form of music. My first response is to ask them "Everything? Cool...well, who's your favorite Klezmer artist?" They usually look at me stupidly. I'm expecting that, though, as the whole point of the exercise (and in my class, pretty much everything is an exercise of sorts) is to get them to recognize labels....which, since I annually have students try to convince me there are no genres, is a worthwhile endeavor.

I then slam them on the "country" label. What exactly do they mean by "country?" Do they mean every single artist performing every single variety? Do they include (or have even heard of) alt-country? Bluegrass? Breaking down the country label is important, because it works as a perfect counterpoint to their supposition that there are--or at least, they do not subscribe to--any notion of labels.

Thing is, though, in regard to their distrust of country music, I kinda know how they feel.

I grew up in the South. This means that, for me, there was an influx of Hank Williams Jr. and Garth Brooks (although, to be fair, the latter was probably not geographically limited), and there was something about the music from these two which struck me as...well, formulaic, with a particularly pungent example one being Brooks's song "Rodeo." New Country (so it was called) just hit me wrong. Later, during year one in Ohio, I was riding the off-campus shuttle, and the driver had the radio on a New Country (which, by this time, had achieved such a level of saturation that it was just plain "Country") station, and I finally was able to narrow down exactly the contrived nature of the genre: take out the steel guitar and fiddle, insert a distorted electric, and you would have a hair metal power ballad (which I also loathed). You would, though, have to add a higher level of lyrical obnoxiousness to reach the depths of "She Never Cried When Ole Yeller Died," for which the offending lyricist should be sent to the iron maiden (the medieval torture device, not the band...nah, hell, to one than the other).

It wasn't until I gained a roommate who listened to old-school country (Johnny Cash, Jerry Jeff Walker, Tom T. Hall) where I started to get country, to understand its diversity. Moreover, Cash alone struck me as exponentially more honest than any New Country I've heard. If more people knew this was country, I suspected that maybe the genre wouldn't have such a bad name. In fact, now that I think of it, if I really wanted to get to my students, maybe I could just play them "Sangria Wine" or "Pancho & Lefty."

Most people, though, only have the negative/hokey/cheddar connotations with country music, and so, if they hear anything country-ish, tend to tune out. This includes accents (many Southerners I know hate anything where the singer has a drawl) and instrumentation (fiddle or steel guitar? must be hick!). Hell, I know more than one person who will dismiss a band's whole output if they have one acoustic-based G-C-D song...even if that band happens to be, say, Australian.

This all comes to mind because a few days ago, when I was sorting through my cd collection, I ran across my copy of Billy Squire's Don't Say No and decided to rip it to mp3 for nostalgia's sake. Earlier today, right before lunch, I played the album and live-tweeted my reactions under the hash-tag "isBillySquireStillListenable?" While I found myself still ultimately liking the album (after skipping over a few cheez-puff tracks such as "The Stroke" and ignoring the gloppy production), I kept finding myself thinking of the ineffable connection between country music and arena rock.

There was the obvious one where Squire is, on the cover, playing a Telecaster...which is typically considered a country guitar (though not always; it was in fact their use by the Jacksonville rock bands Radio Berlin and Piewackit which made me want one). There are country chord progressions all over the album, particularly in "I Need You, "My Kinda Lover," and "Don't Say No." True, this is still definitively a rock and roll album, but that doesn't mean country is forgotten. It might even be the nods to country which often contribute to its sing-a-long nature.

Moreover, this is significant in a historical sense. Rock and roll was originally the mad bastard stepchild of a marriage between blues and country music. If you trace rock back to Chuck Berry (as you should), you find yourself with an artist whose songs were remarkably close to country. Slowly, however, in the heavier and more extreme, the familiar country chord structure has been jettisoned, to the point where, in the rare instances we are open to its perception, we don't even recognize it.

Is country now passe? Permanently the land of stereotypes and hicks? Can one even hint at its presence in rock and roll without being castigated, tied to bales of hay and beaten with an old pair of chaps while wearing a crown of tumbleweed?

These are questions I now need to answer.

an evening in the dark

I will always be alone...to some degree

--Jesse Malin

I am, I hate to admit, a deeply insecure person at heart.

I wish I was brave. I wish I was self-assured. I wish I exuded a certain confidence, a certain flair, a certain panache, where my pure awesomeness drew people to me...only so I would always know I had friends.

I doubt myself constantly. I say goofy things to have something to say and do goofy things (such as order customized guitar picks) to give people some reason to remember me....because without a gimmick, who would pay attention? My darling spousal unit repeatedly tells me my fears are uncalled for, that I'm plenty good enough on my own, and at some level, I guess I believe her...yet I have doubts.

Yesterday, I joked in the morning with my 39-week-pregnant spousal unit that we should hold a massive cook-out/party/bash with everyone we know for Memorial Day. She gave me a look of...I don't actually wanna call it "withering contempt," but the term is in fact kinda accurate. However, about a half hour before band practice, she changed her mind. We had my band over for post-rehearsal hot dogs...and then a few additional friends joined us. We went outside to the back porch, a few of us lit cigars, and we hung out until all hours of the night talking about all kinds of random stuff...from pet ownership, to television shows, to critical theory.

It was awesome.

There's something about a dimly lit area, where friends can gather, hang out with no pressure to perform, see what conversational directions come up. Cigars and beer help...they act as a certain kind of social lubricant, an excuse for us to spend time together, to explore ourselves and each other, to look for points of connection...and often, this is exactly what I need.

An evening at the bar, at the porch, or somewhere similar always gives me a better outlook. It doesn't erase the doubts...hell, I have enough of them to last several lifetimes...but if I can have these friends, experience this level of connection, a night like last night will at least take those "you're not worthy" voices in my head down a notch...which is sometimes all for which a paranoid self-doubter like myself can hope.

academic belonging

I just read through the last two months of The Chronicle of Higher Education, and I'm angry.

When I first entered the job market, online notifications were not as omnipresent as they are today, so a Chronicle subscription was a necessity if just for the massive job listings...so I subscribed. Along with the job listings, though, the Chronicle offers enough good entry-level primers for key debates in many fields of study, and some of these are, quite frankly, awesome. It was because of Duncan Watts 's piece in the Chronicle, for instance, that I discovered Six Degrees, one of my favorite books. And of course, when my job search did not go as expected, the paper's "Career" section kept me sane by letting me know that I was not alone in my struggles.

It's different now. When I started reading the Chronicle, I was certain it would be nothing but a matter of time until I moved on to a good job, one which would allow me to write more articles, get that book out, generally create and share new knowledge, maybe even make a difference. Now, however, I frankly know better...and that changes everything.

I'm angry at the job posts...even if I was able to apply for them, they would just lead to more depersonalized rejection. I'm angry at the narratives and analyses of the job market, of the state of academia, because they are all stories and takes that are that much more removed from my personal reality. Most of all, however, I'm angry at the overviews of disciplinary debates, the profiles of scholars, all those think-pieces. They just act as reminders that, not only is no one really interested in what I have to say, I will never have time to expand what I have to say into any form which people might eventually find notable.

The Chronicle of Higher Education used to inspire me and make me feel like a professional. Now, it's more a reminder that it's for academics, for scholars...and I really can't count myself amongst their ranks.

bringing the arena into the club

All of these moves are carefully planned

--Inspector Clouseau

Lately, I've been thinking about space...in particular, arenas.

For the record, I am currently in what might I humbly consider a kick-ass band, with a great singer/guitarist, drummer, and bassist. Clubs are our environment...we've played pretty much everywhere there is to play in this town and made three forays into Toledo, playing with acts both national and local. Over the year plus three months we've been playing out, we've assembled a nice baker's dozen of pretty awesome original songs (three of which you can sample via the video clips on the right) and a few recurring covers. Our drummer, though, is leaving town, so our days are numbered (make sure to come to our farewell show on July 30th at Howard's after you buy some merchandise, end of plug).

Which begs the question: what next?

Once Analog Revolution is gone, I initially pictured myself just sitting on the couch, plunking on guitars while absent-mindedly reminiscing on past glory. Maybe, I supposed, I would record the occasional psychotic instrumental. It would be a far cry from playing on a cramped, sweaty stage, but the year plus in the band has miraculously made me conceive of myself as a guitar player again, and that's something I refuse to give up.

Life, though, has a habit of happening. Rather than reverting to a couch guitarist, I have instead been recruited by a friend to start a new band. My friend is in three other bands, but I guess that's not enough for this madman...he seems to like my playing enough to want to play with me, which is nice. Additionally, as he seems to like my songwriting and has so many other commitments, he has also given me free reign over much of the songwriting. This is perfect, because I have always loved writing as much as playing, and since Analog Revolution hasn't (for some reason) been using any of my stuff for a while, I have a backlog of material ready and waiting. It's even kind of thrilling, knowing I will get to hear my new songs finally performed.

What is most different about my new, yet-unnamed band, though, is that we have time to plan, plot, and scheme. I still have a few months of Analog Revolution, and my friend has his other three bands, so we're not hurting for outlets. Also, I have urchin on the way, so I have other commitments for the immediate future at any rate. We might as well take our time figuring out what our band is going to be. This means that while Analog Revolution was an example of evolution (we never really had a plan and just kinda grew into our identity), this band will be closer to intelligent design.

So, how does space fit into this?

A few sessions ago, we were blasting through a song (okay, more its skeletal framework than its complete structure, but you get the point), and, when we ended, we spontaneously broke into the endless bashing chords with solo guitar over top which is so common in many of the more self-indulgent forms of heavy music which I dearly appreciate. We both laughed, and my friend immediately suggested we end all our songs this way...which made me realize how much I'm gonna love this band. I then quipped that, when people ask us what we play, we needed to call ourselves "alternative arena rock."

This, however, let me into a tough mission. I then had to figure out what exactly "arena rock" meant...and then figure out a way we could possibly be an alternative to it.

I polled friends. I had cigar-based discussions. I drank and thought. Most people seem to tie arena rock to (surprise, surprise) rock and roll played in arenas...but this didn't really work as a set of conventions for me. When asked to get more specific, some people brought up theatrics, some brought up pyro, some brought up commercialism. One online friend said all our songs have to be about "beer and boobs." Others listed possible arena rock bands as including Foghat (which I can see), REO Speedwagon (sure), Styx (maybe early stuff), Motley Crue (hah?), Queen (nah), and WASP (ooooookay). Most people seemed to think a "corporate stooge" label was essential.

There were a lot of qualifications others brought up which I just didn't buy, of course. But through all the debate, I came away with this definition: loud, guitar-based rock and roll, with songs based on simplified (often blues-based) chordal structures containing big/catchy/sing-a-long choruses. This I can do. That arena rock tended to take place in arenas is evident, but I think it could also work in a club environment. Moreover, I know of many cool bands (The Hold Steady on a national level, and the Matt Truman Ego Trip here in Toledo) who are already doing this kind of stuff.

But I doubt they are doing it quite as weirdly as will we.

This means, though, I have to start figuring out how to apply this to the riffs which I have stockpiled. To this end, I have tried several approaches. I have started carrying around a notebook to record cool-sounding lyrical ideas. I have started to keep a recorder near my guitar for any riffs which might present themselves. I have started to, when plunking on riffs, figure out what bits sound more "chorus-y." I have started to try and sing along to said chorus-sounding bits...mostly in a "na-na-na" kinda voice, because I figure anyone can sing nonsense syllables. I have learned drum machine software so that I might construct structured demos. In short, I have been thinking about how to take the "we want everyone to feel the power" attitude of arena rock and translate that into something that will blast people off their barstools.

Moreover, I have been thinking about space: where to fill it, where to leave it open, how to slowly build. People might get crammed into arenas, but they don't need the entire space to be filled. No one wants to be in wall-to-wall humanity and get hit with a million beats. After all, if the band never shuts up, how will the crowd ever participate? It is, I feel, about strategically filling the space...knowing when to hit the damn instrument and when to simply let its vibrations ring out.

I'm still not 100% sure I know how we're gonna do this...but I got a feeling it's gonna be good.

why box stores suck

When I got my full-time gig, I decided that I wanted to decorate my shiny new office with adult-level art. I didn't want to use Dali prints, movie posters, Christmas lights, or anything that would be at home in a college dorm...no, I had a full-time job, so I was now an "adult" (whatever that means). I went to a few art fairs, but the only things that were even remotely affordable were of the "horse" genre, "barn" genre, or the more experimental "horse in front of barn" school of photography....and while I wanted an adult space, I didn't want that space to be reminiscent of adult farmers.

Frankly, I felt I could do better. So, rather than return to my early love of fingerpainting, I decided my quest to take control of my artwork would be better served by buying a digital camera and learning more about photography via first-person experimentation. I got a decent point-and-shoot, started messing around, and eventually, I think I got pretty good for a hobbyist (although you can judge for yourself). My office, in addition to the "wall of band flyers" (of which I'm very proud), has some very cool shots, and my oft-oblivious and next-to-impossible-to-impress students have even complemented me on occasion.

For a fairly old (6 years at this point) point-and-shoot, my camera has done pretty well. However, there are things it does not do particularly stellar. The flash, for instance, sucks...it looks like someone lit a pile of magnesium on fire. I hate flash photography anyway, so I try to do low and natural light images...but people have to either stay perfectly still for several months consecutively (the shutter speed on my camera is essentially glacial), or the image just introduces a whole bunch of noise and blur.

So, when I found out I was gonna be a father, I realized one of my "father" tasks would be documenting Mighty's growth and development...so a new camera, I reasoned, would be a pretty reasonable investment. I asked friends for recommendations, did the research, and settled on a good model. And, for the last baby shower, my awesome sororal unit gave me a sizable gift card for one of the big box appliance stores...I won't say exactly which one, but they claim to have the (ahem) "best buys."

I sit down to purchase it online yesterday. I pull up the store's website, search for the model, and find it. Hey, they even are advertising free shipping! So I add it to my cart, and then it tells me "shipping is not available." Um, okay. Then I see it has "ship to store/pickup" as an option...so I entered my zip code, and it listed a bunch of stores. I click on the "add to cart" button listed for the closest one...and the page refreshed, but with "unavailable at this location." Grr. I then clicked on the next store...and the next...and the next...but the damn camera wasn't available at any store in a hundred miles (a fact the website decided to tell me only in annoying little increments).

By this time, I'm steaming. So, on the suggestion of the spousal unit, I call the company's 1-800 number. They put me through to a digital camera sales specialist. I explain my plight...and the sales expert informs me they only have a few of my cameras available nationwide. I ask if they can ship me one of the models, and they tell me they cannot. Um, okay. I ask them why the model is listed on the website, and they tell me that they've been meaning to take it off-line. Um, sure. I ask them if they're going to get more, and they say they should eventually. That's helpful. I ask if they can tell me when, and they say they haven't been given that information. Gee, thanks. I then ask if they can send me an e-mail or something when they do get some more in, and they tell me, no, for some reason, they cannot.

This is from a customer sales specialist?

I realize that this is the very definition of a first world problem...but hell, why is a store so determined to make it hard to give them money for a product they supposedly stock? If I didn't have the gift card, I'd go somewhere else, but I'm kind of locked in to a store which wants to make it very hard for me to give them my business. And this is not the first time this has happened...a little over a year ago, they refused to honor their price-match guarantee because their mp3 player model was (get this) a different color. I thought about just getting a different model camera, but the next best four options were also back-ordered or out of stock. Sigh.

Yeah, this is so much better than having a local, specialized, service-oriented retailer.

I'm trying to figure out exactly what the benefit might be of such box stores, and I gotta admit, I'm drawing a blank. It can't be an increased selection...because this company only claims a wide selection which they don't actually have. It can't be cheaper prices...because that's kind of a moot issue when they don't want to actually sell you anything. The point, best as it seems, appears to be to dumb down the average consumer to accept whatever crap service the corporations give you.

This is why, the older I get, the more I hate capitalism.

first world problems

There is a ton of stuff going on in my life right now, but I haven't really felt like writing about much of it. You see, I have a fear...and it has to do with my face.

Let me back up. After the first time I took my spousal unit home to stay with my parents, she didn't immediately get our family dynamic. A couple of visits later, there was a night where she looked at me and said "you know, I think I have your family figured out...you express your love for each other by picking on each other." It's true...maybe it's the British in us, but sarcasm is a requirement if you want to survive.

Back here in the great white North, I have plenty of friends, people who love me. They too express their love (or at least a slightly lowered level of disdain) for me by picking on me. While they might do this with each other to a certain extent, I'm pretty sure I get picked on more than the rest. With my family, I could understand the picking as a result of cultural heritage, but save a few far flung friends, Britishness does not run in my circles. So why the biting interaction even emanating from those who, I'm pretty sure, seem to like me for some reason? I can only assume I have one of those faces that says "hey, put me down."

Couple this with my own natural tendency to focus on the elements of my life where foibles exist, where things go less according to plan and instead actively work against me to some degree (which some people, incidentally, interpret as whining), and the level of verbal warfare can become significant. And yes, as I've had this particular style of interaction for all my life, I'm generally used to being slammed, to being put down, to being burned. I can generally tell that it comes from love rather than hate. But there are exceptions, moments where I take things to heart more than I should. Particularly as I get older, as I experience loss and uncertainty more frequently, and I sometimes become hyper-aware of perception.

Particularly lately, I've been holding a lot of stuff in. Part of it is knowing, compared to many of my friends, my lot in life isn't really that bad. Part of it is having so many undeniably good things going on in my life (a beautiful spousal unit, a forthcoming package o' joy, an utterly kick-ass band), dwelling on the negatives I honestly feel might make me come off as at best a bigger whiner than anyone already suspects or at worst an ungrateful bastard...either of which might open me up to more verbal abuse than I can stand.

But if I can't talk about these things, they fester. If I hold in the shadows, it becomes darkness. If I can't write about my own life, my own feelings, my own fears, what am I doing?

I will be posting here more frequently. While I will try to have some kind of balance, at heart, it's really healthier for me to be honest, to work through some issues. And if it ever seems at any moment that I'm turning into one of those tremendously blessed people whining about my first world problems, please realize that I too am aware of my tone...and that I am also working on posts about happy stuff (like dancing baby sloths).

Be patient with me.

my friend Matthew

A friend of mine died last night.

Matthew was someone I was really just getting to know, but I was really enjoying getting to know him. He was working for his MA from the same place I got my Ph.D. He had an unabashed love for and knowledge of cheesy 80s hair metal and role-playing games. He was a fan of my band. He was funny, nice, bubbly, warm, and just willing to go out of his way for you. I hung out with him just Tuesday night, and we talked academics and comics. Afterward, he dropped me off on his way home.

These are only fragmentary recollections...but I guess they'll have to be enough for now. Tonight, my band plays out, and I am going to rip through our set in his memory.

the gender predicative

Since we've made the big announcement, there's been a lot of fear. Not about the impending birth, mind you. Nah, my fear is entirely bound with the level of gender role saturation which inevitably arises whenever either of us mention the forthcoming urchin.

The first thing I noticed is that it mattered not what we said...any observation/fact/detail about Mighty DuBose would invariably be interpreted as a sign we were going to have boy (50% of the time) or girl (50$ of the time). Tell someone that the heart rate was 150 at the last appointment, and you would hear "Oh, that means you're having a boy/girl." Spousal Unit tells someone she's been craving cinnamon, and that definitely means we're having a son. Tell someone she's also craved root beer, and that's a sign it will be a girl. It doesn't matter: how Spousal Unit is carrying, how much sleep she gets, how much and where exactly Mighty kicks, what time of day urchin was conceived, what phase of the moon, how urchin reacts in utero to zombie films, whatever you can imagine, it becomes a scientific marker of sex-to-be.

The absolute weirdest one so far? One co-worker told my spousal unit that if she uses the rest room and then pours Draino down the toilet before flushing, it will change color, and the resulting color will show either boy or girl...said co-worker didn't know what color would mean what, though, so this is one we didn't try. Plus, how did Draino's last reformulation affect its gender-prediction properties? No one is saying.

I've read a lot about how parents are supposed to react to pregnancy, and most sources say both parents will have strong preferences for either a boy or a girl, "I just want it to be healthy" claims to the contrary. Personally, though, I honestly had no real preferences...and I am most certainly an interested party. This makes everyone else's innate need for gender that much more puzzling. Co-workers and good friends both have made it their mission to trick us into saying one way or another. Why are they so invested as to resort to treachery?

The Spousal Unit had someone at work hold a baby shower for her. Spousal Unit told her co-workers that we weren't disclosing the sex of the kid, and that gender-neutral gifts would be best. Nevertheless, one coworker (convinced Mighty would be a boy) got blue clothes with race cars, while another (convinced Mighty would be a girl) got an array of pink outfits.

This weekend, I was telling these tales to a relative. Said relative looked at Spousal Unit for a minute and said, "But I know you're having a boy...I can tell by just looking at you...and I'm 95% accurate."

Sigh.

the costs of pregnancy

Pregnancy does many things to women. The spousal unit, for instance, has been suffering the standard spacial disorientation, pregnancy brain, fatigue, and numerous other symptoms, so I have a little bit of first (well, second) hand knowledge of some of the things pregnancy can dos.

Today, I found another effect of pregnancy.

I was doing student conferences today from home for my online class. In between video and text chats, I decided to use my spare minutes to assemble the urchin's crib-in-a-box. It took a while, particularly since I had very few short or no-show conferences...and it's very hard to get any momentum with a single five minute work session per hour. So, unfortunately, when the spousal unit got home, I wasn't completely finished.

I labored on, though. It was, after all a quintessential male activity...sitting in a study-in-the-process-of-becoming-a-nursery, bolting together furniture for the forthcoming bundle of joy as the pregnant lady rests in the other room. A little under an hour later, I had finally finished.

I came into the living room to grab the mattress, and the spousal unit followed me back to the now-it's-actually-looking-somewhat-like-a-nursery...and, of course, as soon as she saw the criblet out an "awww." I put my arm around her and said "you know, this really helps drive home the fact that in just a little while, I'm going to be a father"...and then, after a brief beat, let out a brief panicky yell and ran out of the room.

Nothing. I came back in the room, and the spousal unit was examining the crib.

"What? No reaction at all?"

She didn't even look up. "Get used to it, dear."

So, one more thing pregnancy does for women...it removes their appreciation for cheesy spousal drama. Sigh.

transition

No, it's not going to stop

so just give up

--Aimee Mann

Some kids want to be firemen or astronauts. Both options never really appealed to me...they both required more energy and physicality than I had. I was always a fairly sedentary child. My parents love to tell how I would always rather read a book rather than go outside and play.

It wasn't that I was lazy, per se. It's just that, given a choice, books always won out over running around. I would prefer to sit around, read, and think about what I had just read. Thinking was about figuring stuff out. It was about entering other words. It was about letting my mind go farther than my body ever could travel. The first books I can remember reading were the "Classics Illustrated" kid's versions of classic books. Then I graduated to the actual classics themselves (A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court was particularly vivid). Then it was on to detective fiction. I started science fiction and fantasy upon stumbling across Lord of the Rings in my middle school library. Then a friend introduced me to horror. Eventually, it was just any book, any story, any genre...as long as it transported me somewhere or let me think, it was where I wanted to be.

Somewhere in high school, my reading became subsumed by events...mostly work, guitar, and partying. Class took some of my time, but I got sucked into a job which occupied many more of my hours. I moved from part-time job to part-time job. Eventually, I found myself selling water as an operator-standing-by. When we were slow, we had permission to read, and it prompted a bit of a resurgence in my readings...I actually went through my local library's entire science fiction section.

Reading became important to me again...I found myself diving back into thinking, exploring, learning. There was, however, an unexpected result: I found myself increasingly aware of exactly how dead-end my series of menial crap jobs had become. I would like to say that I realized how little impact my various occupations (whether water seller, pizza maker, rat killer, or warehouse worker) made on anyone, and that I decided I wanted to move on to a career where I would make the world a better place, but the truth was nowhere so noble. Simply put, reading made me realize that I was tired of not feeling smart.

So I quit my water-selling job and went back to school. From the beginning, I wanted to figure out a way I could make reading and thinking my career, and pretty much from the start, this meant going to school long enough to become a teacher...in essence, I wanted to enter the university and never leave it. I wanted to become a professional thinker, someone who worked with ideas, explored theory, created knowledge. This implied teaching, but although I became very good at, enjoyed, and ultimately found teaching to be very rewarding, it was always about thinking for me, first and foremost.

I did everything I could think of to become a professional thinker. I studied night and day. I became a graduate assistant. I wrote. I read. I started my own literary journal. I wrote articles and published as many as I could. I expanded my vita as much as possible. Becoming a professional thinker--that is, getting a tenure-track professor's job--has pretty much been my focus since I went back to school in 1994. It has been the reason why I've read more than I ever thought I would, taught myself discipline after discipline, and spent my summers reading, writing, and thinking.

Unfortunately, my grand plan didn't work.

I got my Ph.D., entered the job market, and...nothing happened. I sent out over 500 applications in my time, and these did lead to a few phone interviews. The ones I wanted the most, though, I never heard back from the universities. I did get two campus interviews, but they were both at schools (including the community college I , and actually attended) where I really didn't want to work. I published more and more, but it's paid off less and less. It's been years since I've even heard back from any school where I've applied. No one, it seems, is interested in hiring me as a professional thinker.

Yesterday, I deleted all of the job announcement e-mail alerts in my in-box. Some time this week, I will unsubscribe to all my academic job feeds.

It's not, for the record, all bad. I do have a full-time job (albeit in a different field). I have published a lot of my writing, and when I last checked (which was a few years ago--in spite of my ego, I don't really sit around and google myself), some of them were used in classes and in other scholars' dissertations. But ultimately, thinking is not my career...and, as I will not be able to be on the job market for the next two years, there's little hope of me ever becoming a professional thinker.

Why did I not succeed? It's actually not a surprise to me. In an attempt to be different, I picked a topic that no one else was doing. Instead of being cutting-edge, though, my topic was just dramatically unhip. This prevented me from getting work doing anything other than part-time work for the first two years after graduation, and part-time teaching leaves utterly no time or mental energy for thinking or writing. Then, when I finally realized my dissertation was unhip, I rebranded myself...into something else that was also unhip. Then the economy imploded. Then many state governments decided that educators were the problem and that schools could survive without funding.

So it is officially time to give up on the job market. I wish my friends on the market the absolute best of luck, particularly since they're no longer my competition. I envy them: they still live in the world of ideas.

Me, though, not so much. I still have my dissertation-to-book project to write, and I still have three papers in circulation. I might still send out some apps when, in 2013, I'm able to reenter the job market, but I don't really have much hope. If I am honest, I've known for quite some time that I will never be a professor.

There is still tons to do, though. I have become a performing musician. I have pretenses of just being a writer...maybe an essayist, maybe a writer. And I still have article ideas, so the academic world isn't done hearing from me.

It's time, though, to admit that I'm transitioning into being a hobbyist thinker.

style versus innovation

These chords are old, but we shake hands

'cause I believe that they're the good guys

I'm blessed by the ability to play music. Last weekend was a good one for me: an acoustic show, an electric show, converting new fans, getting to see some of my favorite bands, hanging out with my bandmates, feeling fully like a music guy again.

In spite of this, I do believe that in a very real sense, music ended quite some time ago.

When someone decided that kids in between the age of thirteen and eighteen needed to have their own separate culture, music started to change at an astounding rate. Shocking became the key trope in distinguishing "teenage cultural artifact A" from one belonging to your father. Depending on the genre and medium, this could mean any number of things. Obscenity. Blood. Brighter colors. Faster pace. Increasing illegality. Controlled substances. The street. Graphic whatever.

In music, this turned in many cases to an obsession with hardness. In rock, it was first in incorporating the forbidden timbre and groove of black music. Then lyrics became increasingly more... gritty... realistic... guttural... streetwise... obscene... whatever. In the meantime, some pioneer decided that using crappy, inefficient, prone-to-explode equipment could be, in and of itself, both beautiful and transgressive. Tempos increased. Distortion piled on top of distortion. The tone underwent went a slow crescendo into noise.

Unfortunately it was often missed, in this struggle to become more and more shocking, a realization, a certain subtle factoid, and it was this: at an eventual point in time, musicians would reach the point where they physically could not play any faster. Sooner or later, you would run out of startling lyrical possibilities. Eventually, you would meet the maximum level of distortion. Where would you go after you finally hit the wall? When there was no other side as a possible destination? Where can you go when you've gone too far?

I've never really known. My personal musical style could hardly be called progressive, futuristic, envelope-pushing. I am, at heart, just a blues-rock guitarists. My scale is the minor pentatonic. Yes, I use effects, but they are too far out of fashion to even be considered in the neighborhood of retro. I am far from the first person, for instance, to use an envelope filter or analog octave divider.

One friend, upon hearing me play, complemented me before saying she hadn't heard anyone play like me in a long time. My look must've been questioning, because she said, "y'know, like arena rock-ish." It took me a while to realize how accurate she was, and, more to the point, be okay with my arena rock influences. Hell, at one point in my life, I wanted to be a musical pioneer. Then I wanted to be unique. Now, though, I'll settle for just being the kind of guitar player I always wanted to be.

Sometimes, you gotta let the guitar talk. Sometimes you gotta just hit it. That's what I do.

home improvement.

One of the real problems of being a media scholar is that you quickly run out of any entertainment options which might in any way be described as "brainless." I try out tons of programs in the pursuit for something that doesn't really make me think, but sooner or later, I'm breaking down everything. I quit watching food television because I couldn't turn off the gender analysis. I've tried NCIS, but the stereotyping drives me insane. The list goes on.

My latest effort in my pursuit of "not thinking for at least a moment" is home improvement television. Now, I've watched tons of shows in my years. For a while, I could've been described as a Bob Villa junkie. I've seen every single This Old House and Hometimes, many of them multiple times. I enjoy it, but mentally, I already have paper after paper planned. Some of them would be quite good ones, if only I had time to write them...damn job that doesn't reward scholarship.

I try to go more brainless by delving into HGTV, but that doesn't help. Many of the shows feature people looking for new houses...these always drive my thoughts into the area of class warfare, as I have very little sympathy for anyone depressed over the lack of housing options under $650,000. I watch the design shows, and they only make me want to invent a new game: "Gay or Canadian"...because all the hosts seem to be...well, you get the picture.

Lately, I've been watching the Mike Holmes programs Holmes on Homes and Holmes Inspection. They're particularly interesting, because they reverse the standard home improvement narrative. These shows are certainly not telling you "yes, you can do it yourself." No, they make absolutely no attempt at claiming viewer empowerment. You watch this show, and you have no thoughts about your repair competency. Moreover, they don't even hint that professionals in the field might be competent...quite the opposite, in fact. I watch Mike Holmes, and I feel utterly depressed at the possibility of there being anything close to an honest, skilled professional anywhere. Except Mike Holmes himself, of course...he is, according to the show, the construction industry Jesus, albeit with a Canadian accent.

Today's episode was particularly brutal. The previous owners of the hell-house in question had apparently, before selling to the now shell-shocked couple, found massive termite and rot damage, all caused by the fact that the foundation was made of dirt...simple, unpacked dirt. Their solution? Just insulate and drywall over everything. The crew's fix wasn't so much a gut job as a "bomb and start over job." It was truly horrifying.

The critical side of my brain is still trying to process a home improvement show which argues most professionals are incompetent, some of them at levels bordering on criminal. Are they telling us that experts everywhere inherently suck? Is a home improvement channel really trying to dissuade me from ever becoming a home owner?

I would worry about this all that much more if I wasn't doomed to enough poverty to never escape being a renter...and might even make the swarm of bees seem a reasonable price.

Thank goodness for debt.

the Rusty Scotch-Aid

Sitting around late at night watching television? Depressed at the state of the world, your state government, the forthcoming sinus infection, and hopes of a successful resolution to the NFL labor situation? Maybe it's just me...but at times like these, I think the best thing to do is (wait for it) create a new mixed drink! I call it "the Rusty Scotch-Aid":

• take a high-ball glass and add ice
  
• pour in a healthy slug of cheap Scotch that someone gave you
  
• squeeze in a quarter of a lemon and dump in the remainder
  
• add a tablespoon or so of sugar syrup...more if the Scotch is particularly cheap
  
• top off with soda water
  
• stir, sip, and watch scary television
  

I am a rock star

One of these days see me driving round town

In my rock 'n' Rolls Royce with the sun roof down

I am a rock star.

No, not really. In reality, I'm a guy who's married to a wonderful/pregnant spousal unit, teaches writing under an uncertain future (thanks, Senate Bill 5!), and who plays in a local (meaning we can't get gigs the next town over) band. But from the time I bought my first crappy guitar, I always had visions of being on stage, playing to a worshiping throng of admirers who would hang on my every note and scream at the end of the solo. It was my dream

This, of course, never happened for lots of reasons. I've known for ages I would never be a rock star. Going back to college perhaps sealed the deal, but I kinda knew long before that. But there are still times where, when I close my eyes, I wonder what it would've been like to play arenas.

I know, though, I will never be a rock star. So, a few weeks ago, I decided to do the next-best thing: I ordered some custom guitar picks!

I found a place online who sold custom guitar picks for a reasonable price. I went to town with GIMP on a photo from one of my past shows and made myself look like a cool line drawing. I uploaded my photo, moved some stuff around, and gave them my credit card number. A little over a week later, I recieved a bag of shiny, customized .73mm color delrin picks.

The picks are a geeky fantasy come true, something I've always wanted. I've given them to friends, most of whom seem inordinately thrilled to get a 50 cent piece of plastic. Some have told me they're the coolest thing they've seen. One or two (who were admittedly drinking at the time) said something about putting the pick with their special souvenirs. True, one friend, upon seeing the pick, said "DuBose, you're such a nerd" (admittedly, she does have a case), and my singer has threatened to quit the band if I throw a handful to the crowd during some gig.

This past weekend, I went to see Two Cow Garage, my favorite band in the world, when they played at a Toledo bar. I know both Micah, the guitarist and Shane, the bass player, so when I said hello to them, I gave them each a pick. During their set, Shane used my pick...and showed it to me from the stage. Maybe I became a rock star by proxy...just a little, mind you.

Afterward, I was saying my goodbyes. When I was talking to Micah, I told him that I showed one of my classes clips from a documentary someone did on them a few years back, and how it depressed the students. The students, I told him, focused on how hopeless it seemed to make it in the music industry. This puzzled me at the time, and, I told Micah, I couldn't figure out why the state of the industry was of such importance to them...because personally, I don't give a crap about executives, labels, or any of that. Instead, I care about bands and music. The industry? Stardom? Ultimately, it doesn't seem very important.

This does not mean, however, that I will ever give up my custom guitar picks. I'm holding onto at least a small fragment of the dream.

just a number

But you know

The years make things different

When I turned 21, I actually did it at someone else's birthday party. It was close to midnight, and a friend asked who was of legal age. When I said I would be in 17 minutes, he insisted on driving me to the store...and then he insisted on waiting until 12:01...and then he insisted the clerk card me for my beer purchase.

After that, I don't really remember much about most of my birthdays. I understand why many people want to be sentimental about such things, and I kinda wanna be sentimental myself...but there is just very little of most of them that stick in my mind. There have been parties, there have been meetings at the bar, there have been times where I've just stayed at home and watched television. The one that sticks out most in my mind was when it was just me, my lovely spousal unit, and a vampire friend at Howard's Club H. I remember it because, after my spousal unit asked me three times if I wanted a delivery from The Cookie Jar, I finally asked her, "you want cookies, don't you?" She did that enormously cute pseudo-guilt look by way of reply. The cookies ended up being very tasty, though.

Moreover, my age itself hardly sticks with me. When I was 33, I remembered my age for two reasons: the play speed of an LP and the back of a Rolling Rock bottle. I remembered 34 because of a line from a Goober and the Peas song...of course, the song was about stalking, so I tried really hard not to think about it all that closely. I associated 35 with The Jayhawks song "Big Star" because of the line "a has-been at a mere 35"; that song ultimately is more optimistic than it sounds, but I still didn't think about it all that closely.

After that, though, whenever someone asked me my age, I would have to stop and think about it...and, embarrassing enough, do the math before I answered. While I realize some people might look at this as a sign of my encroaching senility, I've just never been that good at remembering some basic, simple facts. Hell, I still have to look at my hands most of the time to remember which side is my left and which side is my right.

The bigger issue is that I simply don't feel all that different. Back when I was still working in the pizza industry, I was sharing a cigarette with my supervisor, and we were talking about age. He took a drag off his smoke, looked into space, and said, "hell, Mike, I still have to stop and realize I'm not 22." When I was 25, this struck me as funny. Now, though, I can completely relate.

There was a time when I started to feel old. It was when I was working at another pizza place, and all the employees were teenies. No surprise there...the restaurant industry feeds on the young. However, I became acutely aware they were all younger than I only because they were all listening to more current music than I. I realized I was up against a decision. I could become a person whose references, experiences, and culture all came from his high school years (you know, the people who don't own an album that came out later than their 24th birthday). Or I could just dive into the world and experience it as I see fit...which might require me to reach a little bit outside my comfort zone. When I started to look outside of myself, age really quit being an issue.

Today, I turned 40. There's no tears, there's no freakout. There's really little significance at all for me. However, there's something better. When I woke up today, there was an awesome card and some organic dark chocolate from my beautiful preggie spousal unit waiting for me. There was about 40 e-mails and notifications wishing me a happy birthday, all of whom I appreciate more than I say. Tonight, there will be a good dinner and drinks with friends. If getting older brings all this, well, that is indeed alright.