ignorance, fast food, and screen time

When I became a parent, I found myself hungry for advice. In an effort to stave the encroaching panic about my lack of fatherhood skills, I hunted down suggestions from every possible source. Me and my wife, for instance, purchased more than one of the books from the What to Expect When You're Expecting series. We scoured over them. Prior preparation prevents poor performance, right?

As it turned out, after about ten months, most of these books went by the wayside, never to be opened again. What was the issue? On one hand, since every child develops differently, the advice they contain requires so much interpretation, it's not funny. Worried your kid is slow learning to do something? Consult the book...only to find that while many children acquire the skill at this age, many others do so either earlier or later in their development cycle. It only takes a few of these instances to begin to see said books for what they are: the parental equivalent of junk food...nice every so often, but no substitute for actual food.

Lots of the advice also tends to be common sense stuff.  There is one important condition to this, however: the parent cannot be an idiot. Any section on proper nutrition works as a good example. If you need to be told not to feed your eight month old McDonald's hamburgers, no amount of outside advice is going to really help your parenting skills.

One bit of advice I saw more than once was to make sure you limit your child's screen time. Watching too much television, the books claim, can hinder emotional and mental development, thus possibly turning your child into a slithering moron. No more than three hours per day, many of them recommend. Others suggested one hour as a maximum. Still others said no television at all. Of course, they also suggested that you move out to a grassland and become a homesteader, gathering your own food from the surrounding wilderness...so take that as you will.

On one hand, I can kind of understand this advice. There is a lot of junk on television...you know, the visual equivalent of that McDonald's hamburger. After all, no one on Earth needs to be exposed to any more Barney or Calliou than absolutely necessary. However, I trained as a media scholar, and as a result, I'm innately suspicious of any claim about the medium overall. It reminds me of those academics who brag that they don't even own a television. I suspect it's more an issue of perceived class than a matter of actual science.

So, with our child, we don't put too many limits on screen time. We try to encourage good shows, and  we try to help her find stuff with some value. That, however, is about it. I feel that my daughter still watches an awful lot of garbage. My wife says I only think this stuff because I'm a bitter person. She also says that I need to let my standards go and remember that it's only kid's programming. Of course I disagree. For example, why on Earth would the Bubble Guppies, who live under water, be flying on an airplane? Of course this drives me crazy, so of course, this is a stupid show.

The thing is, my wife might (shudder) very well be right...because my daughter does seem to become a whole lot smarter as a result of the television shows she watches.

On Wednesday, we were (after a heavy morning of playing and artwork), vegetating and watching television. Well, my daughter was watching while I was playing gin rummy on my phone. She had on something I'd rather ignore, so I was ignoring it. The show must've been something about space, because she said to me, "Daddy, is that true? Is the Earth really a big ball?"

"Yes it is, darling."

"...and if we jumped up and down really hard, could we make the Earth bounce around the room?"

She had my attention. "No, honey. The Earth is really big. It would take a whole lot to move it. You'd have to be a really big giant to have any effect at all."

She thought it over. "A really big giant? Would it work if you were a proboscis monkey?"

And this is why I'm completely rethinking my relationship with media...and, for that matter, with fast food.

crushing expectations

The coolest thing about being allowed to teach a poetry class is to be able to move away from the sleepwalk/recycle mode that I've been in with my other classes. Don't get me wrong; it's not that I don't care about my other classes. However, I have a slate of four different classes I teach, and I've been doing them for over a decade, so they are definitely not surprising me in any way. Moreover, I have them down to where they work, and if they're working, why change? So they require very little creativity on my part.

My poetry class, though? I'm having to think out of the box every time I plan anything. Very little from my previous classes transfers. And while this does mean I have to work a lot harder than normal, it also means that I can be creative...which is something the other classes do not require.

Last Thursday, for instance, we were covering comedy and satire poetry. We got into a discussion of how comedy is contextual, and I started talking about the international versions of "what is funny." I told them some Romanian jokes as an example of black humor. We discussed how lots of British humor seems based on discomfort. I then mentioned Canadian humor, but for some reason, none of my students had never experienced any Canadian comedy. Since we're only two hours away from the border, this confused me. One person asked for an example, so, in a fit of inspiration, I showed them this:



This, my dear readers, is why I love my job so much.

the best thing you will see today, 2/27/16

One of the best things about the interwub is that if you search long enough and are very lucky, you can find the coolest things. For instance, I just found an article (with a video clip) about a sketch on the Richard Pryor Show which had Pryor as a bartender in a Star Wars bar.

You're welcome.

what is and how things should be

A couple of weeks ago, my favorite diner had a fire. It was pretty badly damaged and will have to be gutted and reconstructed. Luckily, my wife and I ate there a few days before, but it seems that ever since, I've had at least four instances of, "Man, I really want to go to the Corner Grill tonight." And ,of course, that's something I can't now do. Sometimes, that's just how life is.

One of the bartenders at my favorite bar loves my favorite diner as much as do I, so by the end of the week of the fire, she had already started planning a benefit show for the diner's employees. I contacted her as soon as I heard and volunteered my services. As much as I miss their food, I also miss the people. Everyone who works at the Grill is awesome. They made my daughter her first hamburger and her first pancake...and most of the times we go, she gets either a chocolate chip smiley face on her pancake, or the cook makes the pancake into a special design (several past favorites have included pancake as cat and pancake as snowman). My daughter has a special relationship with their evening guy, Steve (aka Kilt guy), and they banter regularly. So of course I wanted to help these people. That is how life should work...we should at least take care of our own.

So I was scheduled to play the benefit, which was great. I don't have the next generation of my band ready yet, so I was playing as an acoustic act...just me, six strings, and a kazoo. Of course, I get scheduled to go right after a really heavy, grungy area band. Furthermore, I couldn't get anyone to play with me (my trombonist couldn't get off work), so I'd be facing a crowd of people who just had their ears blasted, and I'd be doing so alone. Further furthermore, no one I knew was able to come and support me. I try to be optimistic (really, I do), but I had grandiose visions of the room clearing before I got to the first chorus of the first song...because sometimes, that's just how life goes.

So after the very cool Casket Company plays and breaks down their massive amplifiers, I mount the stage with acoustic and kazoo. I start playing, and rather than fleeing, most of the crowd stays. I get applause. I get "woos." My Miley Cyrus cover gets a good wave of claps...and in general, it was one of the best received solo performances I've done. After I get off the stage, a few people go out of their way to thank me and to tell me they liked my stuff. That's how my life goes when get really, really lucky.

After my set, I got a chance to hang out with the very cool Dick Pretzel, who was MCing the event. Dick is a stand-up comedian who's been a fan of my music from several bands, and it was great to see a friendly face. I talked to a few of the Corner Grill staff and owner. I had some magnificent vegetarian gumbo. I heard some great tunes. I got to talk to the amazing Justin Payne and hear his set. Sometimes, life can just be good.

While I loved being out, I was beginning to miss my family...so I decided to head home. Only problem was that my car had been towed. It was parked in the same lot I'd been using throughout the last six years of playing at the bar. Apparently someone different than the bar now owns the back 30 feet of the lot, and they just decided to start towing people. So I had to get a ride and pay $100 dollars to get my own car back. Sometimes, that's just how life is.

Slice of life, 2/22/15

So me and my girl were leaving the grocery store, and she was yelling, dancing, and generally aging strange...business as usual, in other words. We got to our car, and we had to wait for the person in the next car to get out. The woman exiting the passenger side saw Sylvia and said, "it looks like someone is a singer."

"And a dancer," my daughter added.

I offered my take: "Or maybe you're just crazy."

"No. I am an artist," my daughter said as she climbed into her seat...and I had to remind myself she's only four and a half..

my Onion Horoscope, 2/12

"Remember: Spring is a time of renewal and rebirth. Barricade the door to your goddamn basement before it arrives"

chew on this

Last night, I had a dream that I was on some college campus, beset by some vague difficulty (it was vague in the dream). As I was trying to solve whatever was going on, I started to chew some gum. Then I tried to spit out some of said gum, but a certain portion of it stuck in my mouth. I spent the rest of the dream torn between solving whatever problem and prying the gum out of my mouth, bit by bit.

While the bit about being on some campus was relatively new, I have actually dreamed about the stubborn gum...about a month ago, I think. But I am no stranger to recurring dreams. As a kid, I used to dream about driving (and sometimes walking) across giant bridges suspended impossibly high over a river-divided city...only about half of the time, significant portions of the bridges in question would crumble or, even worse, be missing altogether. And I have been dreaming of being back at Little Caesars for well over a decade.

The literary part of my mind wonders what the gum dream could mean. I've read my Freud, but this one seems to be beyond Freudian interpretation. At any rate, I'm sure that Freudian dream analysis has probably been proven obsolete by the psychology community...knowing my luck, that is.

Maybe I'll ask my therapist. He'll probably tell me dreams are random brain misfires. But who knows? He has, during our last few sessions, said that pessimists have a more accurate view of reality, come to the defense of escapism, and used a Terminator 2 metaphor. Maybe he'll surprise me again.

My personal future with the gum industry depends on it.

pickles in the morning

Mornings do strange things to us DuBoses. Today? My daughter's first words upon waking: "Daddy? You're a pickle bow. That means you are really good at eating pickles. Hey, wanna hear a joke? Why did the pickle cross the road? To get to the other coffee! You can tell that to your students if you wanna."

weighty issues

Lately, I've lost a bit of weight. I knew I wanted to shed some tonnage for a while, but when I felt my head was good enough to not require 100% of my work, I changed my diet.  I had some thoughts about how to do so (I mean, I had already cut out meat and alcohol), but I decided to eliminate most sugar from my diet after watching this:




This had an interesting level of difficulty. When you start to become cognizant of sugar's omnipresence, grocery shopping changes. I can now only buy product from like 7% of the store. I went full-bore no sugar for the first couple of weeks before I added the occasional fruit back into my system. Even then, I stayed with low sugar (grapefruit, berries) or glucose-centric fruit (bananas, mostly). And whenever I had a craving for...pretty much anything, really, I went to nuts. Peanuts, cashews, and the like became my go-to food.

The results have been really startling so far. I started all of this sometime in the Fall (probably September), and now, I'm down about two and a half stone. I have had to buy smaller jeans, and I've moved up four notches on my belt.

The weirdest thing, though? When people point out that I've lost weight, they tell me "you look good." I respond with, "I always looked good." But really, did no one want to tell me that was I that much of a bloated whale carcass before?  Look, I think I feel better, but that everyone else is now able to look at me? Weird. If I ever break the 200 barrier, I might have to become a model!

ps: I am firmly aware that women have to put up with this kind of crap all the time, and that me having never heard such comments before is due to my male privilege. As much as the sudden focus on my attractiveness strikes me, I am also just adjusting to having people look at me. Weird.

anecdotal evidence on genetics versus learned behavior

One of the coolest things about having a child is getting a chance to do some good first-hand science. After all, you have someone who comes out with only limited influences. What will lead to the subject's new behavior? It's a common question.I particularly love using my child to play out the environment versus genetics debate, and this is where I learned today's important lesson.

I saw a pretty cool article on Buzzfeed about Lego finally introducing a minifigure in a wheelchair. As a social justice warrior, I found this to be overwhelmingly positive, but I didn't want to make assumptions about the future generation. So I showed the picture to my kid. She looked at it and said, "Cool! But you know what's really cool? That one there pushing a lawnmower! Can we get these? Please?"

Now...I am perfectly aware that I might have influenced her lack of surprise when it comes to the physically disabled minifig. But I can most certainly guarantee you that I in no way would ever suggest that mowing the lawn was anything other than agonizing hell. In fact, I have no idea where she might've received a positive feeling towards lawn maintenance.

So, there you are. Science.

so I asked my daughter a question

...and, after she told me where my missing slipper was, she said, "I told you I know everything. I saw it with my bat vision."

This is the next generation. You're welcome, humanity.

epiphanies

I'm teaching two sections of a new (to me) class this semester. When they originally (and fairly at the last minute) threw me into Reading Poetry, I was scared. Not only was it fairly short notice on a class I had never taught class before, I had never actually taught poetry at all. Moreover, as it was a more advanced class than I normally teach, I knew I needed to do a good job. After deciding on a text and entering the initial planning stage, though, the fear turned to excitement. This was gonna be fun.

Of course, that excitement doesn't preclude more fear. I had vast plans this weekend to get my week's lesson plans knocked out early. However, I then got sick and spent most of the weekend scrunched up under a blankie. Today, I had to definitely get the Tuesday class lesson plan done, lingering exhaustion or no.  So I plowed through the material, and guess what? The panic returned.

The problem is that all poetry texts start off with the "how to analyze poetry" sections, and said sections are always the stuff like "all about imagery" or "figures of speech." This has always bored me. I understand the concept of introducing basic terminology, but the implied resulting action pushes poetry towards taxonomy. As an example, one of the poems in tomorrow's reading actually had a discussion question which asked students to circle all verbs and tie them into symbolism. Blech.

This kind of ruins the fun of poetry in my mind. It would be like thinking one could understand all the foibles of humanity by studying anatomy/physiology. One would gain a certain amount of knowledge, but it would be relatively pointless knowledge, suitable for no more than some contemporary card catalog of terminology...and that ain't poetry.

I was slogging through the readings for the second time, though, when it finally hit me. I heard the kettle drums of my psyche pounding. The fluorescents in my study somehow narrowed to a pinhole spot aimed directly at my cerebellum. Choirs of angels (who mysteriously rang out in a voice reminiscent more of Ronnie James Dio verse than of a Handel refrain) chanted. I knew how to tie it all together. The answer? Film director Edgar Wright.

I'd tell you more, but I, in the spirit of a good poetry reading, am more interested in your interpretation than any literal truth.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1) Please identify all uses of irony, simile, metaphor, hyperbole, paradox, and any other figure of speech and spell out the role of these devices in explicating the "epiphanies" mentioned in the title.
2) How would other poets have tackled the same issue? How is their particular use of tone different than in this piece?

just to clarify

It's been one of those weekends. While I could go on in depth on my feelings and attitudes towards said weekend, I just wanted, rather than addressing some specific points, to add some more general clarifying information. Pick and choose whichever is most applicable to you personally.

• Even though some might deride the current crop of "kids" as whiners, the best way to make one's point is not by suggesting they be more often required to kill people. Just a thought, but constant warfare generally might not be a great thing.
• Colleges? If you truly value active learning, you might want to not schedule 2 1/2 hour college classes for Friday afternoons.
• You might possibly be more able to maintain an even mental keel if you quit hunting for people who tick you off so you can let them know you think they are stupid/evil/whatever. Being an evangelical anti-idiot is still being evangelical (in the worst possible way).
• A company refusing to label their product as halal is not a victory in the war on terrorism any more than a company refusing the kosher label for their hot dogs makes said wiener makers anti-Semites.
• I'm not being reclusive or paranoid, honestly, and I don't truly believe there's causality at work. I just seem to get sick whenever the taiko ensemble plays my local dive bar. Someone needs to figure this one out.
• We all know the college textbook industry is evil. It seems college bookstores are complicit in said evil. They are the major pains in my pedagogical backside right now.

Okay, that's enough for now. I gotta get back to work so I can get out of debt, eventually buy a house, and tell kids to get off my lawn

day one from the trenches

Today is day one of the new semester. It's still too early to tell, but I think this will be a fun one.

I had my teaching schedule changed pretty late in the game. Normally, this is a bummer, but this time, I lost two sections of College Composition One and had them replaced with two sections of Reading Poetry. Usually, I'm stuck with the "welcome to college" writing classes or the tech/business writing classes. I do the best I can with them (I've even made the business/tech classes interesting to me...which was an accomplishment, because I found "here's how to write a resume" unbelievably dull). They are not, however, what I pictured myself doing with my life. The poetry classes? Those are fresh, exciting, and fun. I get to feel like a professional, like the kind of teacher I went to college for twelve plus years to become. I've only had literature classes twice before, but each time, they were marvelous. The last fiction class was by far the best time I've had teaching in my life. Don't know if this semester will go that well, but I have hopes.

One of the reasons I have hope? In class discussions today, we agreed that out of all the characters in the Star Wars series, Kylo Ren would be the most likely to be a poet. He is, they agreed, just emo enough to pull off the tortured coffee shop writer bit. I love it when my students are creatively funny.

After my last class, I saw a bunch of students who haven't yet got the textbook taking photos of our next class's reading from those students who already have it. It's the first time I've seen this happen, so I'm particularly impressed with their problem solving.

Let's hope the trend continues

the big time

I guess I must've hit some level of the big time. I just got hacked! Passwords are changed and all, so we're all fine here, but don't open the link in the post earlier today (if you in fact saw it).

I hope this fulfilled some inner desire/ brings some peace to whomever hacked my account...or maybe gives them motivation to do something with their lives.

the latest judgement on my character

My daughter has an issue with never wanting to go to bed. Tonight, after telling me she had been taking an eye injury to stay up, she then asked me to put one of her programs on TV. As a reasonable father, I pointed out that it was already an hour and a half past her bed time. She looked me in the eye and said, "you're as mean as a bulldog."

Of course, not two minutes later, she gave me a very chipper "I love you!" So who knows?

on the other side

The song of the season says, "May all acquaintances be forgot and never brought to mind." That, however, ain't my life. In fact, I seem to have ended up on the opposite side of the equation.

I used to go gallivanting on the 31st. This year? I spent New Years Eve sitting on the couch by myself  (as my daughter was, as per usual, fighting against her mother over the topics of bedtime and sleep). I was watching a documentary as the ball dropped...in fact, I didn't even think of the magic moment until about a quarter of an hour too late. This is, incidentally, much the same thing I did the year before (although, to be fair, I have no real idea what I was watching on 12/31/14).

Does everything (as another song says) really change on New Year's Day? Not for me. The wife and kiddo are visiting my in-laws while I'm prepping classes for next semester. The one person who I could think to call for lunch was too tired to leave his chair. I'm really less ringing out the old or in the new than continuing the same old slog.

I don't want to turn this into a pity party, though. I have plenty of friends...they just seem to live somewhere other than here. The ones still in the area are the ones with wacky schedules which never seem to coincide with mine. I don't quite know how this happened. Some time shortly after my daughter was born, I found it harder and harder to find anyone who wanted to hang out with me, even after doing everything possible to make myself a nicer and more friendly person. Still, the level of social connections just kept decreasing...and, several years later, I still can't seem to reverse the trend.

In one of my songs off the forthcoming album, I have a line that says: "don't wanna be here and still disappear...a social Schrodinger's thing." It's one of my favorite lyrics from the new album, but I gotta admit that it hits a little too close to home. Somehow, I've turned into a social afterthought, and I have no clue how this happened. I have a great life with my family, at work, and playing music. Outside of those, however, there's not much left. Most of the time, I deal with this just fine. Other days? It bothers me...but that's something me and my therapist will just have to keep working on.

Enjoy your 2016, everyone, but remember: more important than flipping over the calendar is finding and holding on to those around you. We're all social animals...even those of us who aren't currently finding much success pulling it off.

stringing together this year's notes

I still get nervous before shows. It's not horrific or anything, and it's certainly not close to being called stage fright. It is, however, still there. My stomach feels a little funny, and once I get to the venue, I have problems talking to people. So I have to apply a laser-like focus to getting set up and mentally prepared (which I hope doesn't come off as jerkish). The second I hit the stage, though, and break into the first chord, I'm generally okay, fine, wonderful even. Everything else is downhill.

I played an emergency gig last night at The Stone's Throw. They have the best open mic night in the area (The Hump Day Revue), so whenever I feel the need to break in a song, blow off some steam, or just get back on the stage, they're my go-to spot. I got there early enough to hear the host break into a Buddy Holly song. Grabbed my pre-show Guinness and grabbed a seat, only to see that the second act was a friend (and the singer for my old band The Black Swamp Rats). I went to set up my merchandise suitcase just as my friend went into "Demons," my favorite song of his (from his band Kitty Glitter).

Then it was my time to hit the stage. It was a strange night in that the bar was packed...but it was mostly middle-aged adults and beyond, plus a couple of families doing a late dinner. Because of the families, I didn't think it would be right to do my newest Christmas song ("Consenting Elves," about partying elves at the North Pole and sexual consent), but I did do "I Don't Wanna Be Depressed This X-Mas." I had to do one of my holiday songs, as I now can't do them until after next Thanksgiving. I also did an acoustic cover of Motorhead's "Overkill" (RIP Lemmy)...which was probably the first time anyone anywhere has ever thrown a kazoo solo into a Motorhead cover. I got six songs total, and then I packed up to make room for a ukulele trio. Really.

It has been an interesting year for my music. I had a great run with one version of my backing band The Antidepressants, which included a festival gig. Then the drummer dropped out, the bass player moved to drums, his neighbor came in on bass, and several more gigs (including another festival). Then that drummer bought an RV and left to drive across the country with his girlfriend.

Solo-wise, I started the year determined to break into new markets. I got a gig at a farmer's market in Michigan. The first one was rainy and sparsely attended, but it was still fun. When I pulled up for my second date, I found out they had double-booked the show...so I turned around and fumed on my two hour drive back home. I also booked a bunch of shows with a new venue in Michigan. I played the first show with my trombonist and had a good time (even though no one was there). Then the rest of the shows were cancelled on me. I still had my Bowling Green and Toledo venues, however. Partway through the year, though, the Toledo booking company went out of business, not even allowing me to finish out my last scheduled date. None of this was exactly good for the soul, but luckily, I still have Bowling Green. Still gotta expand, though.

My alt-country band Midwest Tourist started the year with a bang. We played an early January show (videos of the whole thing!) with a dear friend and songwriting inspiration Micah Schnabel. We played a February show where I moved over to electric guitar (and briefly changed the genre of the band). In March, we did a Couch-By-Couchwest video (in which I wore a funny hat). Then we just kind of stopped. We were going to record an album, and we got started. Then we were interrupted by band personnel turmoil. We got close to recovering from losing a member, and then said member rejoined the band on a limited practice schedule. Now it's been months since our last rehearsal, and there's no telling if, when, or where we will play again. Welcome to the holding pattern.

I had plans to record and release a decent amount of stuff this year. I announced 2015 album project number one. It stalled. I announced a Christmas single. It never happened. I announced album project number two, which I'm doing all by myself. It's going fine, but I had my computer die on me right when I had budgeted recording time. Tomorrow, I get back to it. It's gonna be great (I'm already getting much better quality than on the last disk). It's just not gonna be a 2015 release. Better late and great than never, I guess.

So I've had a lot of strange feelings towards my music career this year. I've lost gigs instead of gaining them. I've lost one band and seen the other one effectively mothballed. I've seen music projects pushed and pushed. On the other hand, I finally did get to hear my music played with a full band. I am still writing new material, and it is getting better with each song. And when I do get on stage, it is glorious.

I was thinking of all this as I packed up my gear last night. Then someone came up to buy a cd from me, and my spirits lifted. I sat down to talk to a former boss and her husband (who was also one of my professors), and they told me I sounded great. I got to talk to my former band member for the first time in ages. The Hump Day host thanked and complemented me about five times. I talked to the mighty Mechanical Cat, who told me he's seen real growth in my performances...before going on to buy a shirt. As I was packing up my shirts and albums, Mechanical Cat told me I had the best merchandise suitcase ever. Then I discovered five bucks in my tip jar. By the time I was loading up my car, thinking about everything just made me laugh out of joy.

It's been an up and down year, but ultimately, I can't think of anything I'd rather be doing...because nothing makes me feel better. I've got big plans for next year (at least one album, more festival and other gigs, a new cover band so I can make money, a new version of The Antidepressants)...but there's plenty of time to let that all unwind.

today's reason i wish i was rich

If I had stupid money? Enough to spend truly frivolously? I would commission a study to measure the accuracy to Netflix's recommendation algorithms. "Because you watched 30 Rock, you might like Broadchurch?" Really??

taking stock

Some time this morning (whilst my kiddo was no doubt playing with one of her awesome new My Little Pony toys), my wife looked at me and said, "I'm so glad you're in a much better place than this time last year."

This took me aback a little. "Was I in a bad mood last Christmas?" I honestly couldn't remember.

"All I can remember is that you seemed to be mad at me."

This took a moment's contemplation before it hit me. "Ah. It must've been the gout, followed by the kidney stones, which all meant I was behind for months, panicking."

"Well, that's not the only thing. Getting your meds adjusted and therapy. But I think it was mostly getting your meds fixed."

She's not wrong. There have been plenty of complications. I wasn't expecting to have my Buick explode...but it did, and the car payment and the insurance bump are just unavoidable realities. I was expecting my music career to go better, and it was for a while...but then my solo band broke up, my alt-country band has pretty much ground to a halt, and my full schedule blew up for reasons which are still unclear.

Yet in spite of these, I persevere and actually do okay...for the most part. And I have even have optimism for the forthcoming year (upcoming classes in poetry instead of only "welcome to college" classes, a cover band which should also morph into a backing band, and another album in progress and coming along nicely). I feel it would be unwise to dwell on such things, though. Better to manage expectations.

Survival is a laudable goal, no?