Halloween, Fat Guy in Driveway

My son was Batman for Halloween, I was a fat guy sitting in my driveway. I wish I had been a Minotaur.

This was our first Halloween in our new neighborhood and I was generally impressed. There were abundant balloons of orange and black with the fancier balloons in the form of ghosts interspersed. The children were polite despite the proliferation of high school kids sans costume looking for candy hand outs. Surely their parents must not be Tea Party members, how could they sanction candy entitlement programs. At the end of the night we had the requisite (and quite dangerous) surplus of chocolate and candy which is now available gratis in the office kitchen.

When I was considering this post I had a varied list of subjects to discuss. (Talking Bird by Death Cab for Cutie just came on my Pandora Station) I could write about why women in an alarming majority uniformly wear slutty costumes at Halloween, or about the disappointing results of the mid-term elections, or about how so many of us wear disguises in our daily life. (A Father and A Son by Loudon Wainwright III just came on my Pandora Station) Ultimately I have decided to incorporate all three subjects because they are undoubtedly related.

Women in Sexy Costumes

(Cocaine Blues by Johnny Cash just came on my Pandora Station (it's the Folsom Prison live version)) Like any guy, I am 100% in support of women in sexy costumes. What I'm more curious about is the psychology behind it. (Give it Up by The Format just came on my Pandora Station) When you put on a costume are you revealing a part of yourself, (Let it Ride by Ryan Adams just came on my Pandora Station) or are you pretending to be something you always wanted to be, or is there nothing special at all about wearing a costume. Don't misunderstand, the sexy permutations are not the point. I am not saying that sexy nurse wants to be a nurse. (The Hazards of Love 4 by The Decemberists just came on my Pandora Station) What I am asking is whether sexy nurse is someone who is always wishing she could have her IV bags on display or is she someone who wouldn't dream of that in her daily life and embraces those few occasions when she can be someone else. I believe it is an important question about motivation: Are you trying to be someone else or exhibiting who you always were?


My wife has just informed me that I am foolish and trying to create meaning where there is none. She also suspects that this post is an excuse to peruse the proliferation of sexy costume pictures on the internet. (You've Got to Hide Your Love Away by The Beatles just came on my Pandora Station) She is probably right, the desire to dress sexy (probably evolutionary) may have nothing to do with deeper seeded thinking about disguises and a person's sense of self but to the extent people are kidding themselves when they put on these costumes, it belies a truth about how we represent ourselves to the world.

The Mid-Term Election

Despite all that Obama has accomplished, the democrats had very little hope of retaining the House. We know that historically the country unseats the ruling party when times are tough, regardless of who created the problem or the progress being made to improve things. What is special about this election is the level of delusion exhibited by voters in comparison to prior elections. The Tea Party has made libertarianism (See Rand Paul) the momentary fashion while simultaneously selling the idea to the same people it would hurt the most. Voting Republican in this last cycle amounted to farmers voting against farm subsidies. More strikingly, but not new in any respect, people without means voted to extend tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, increasing the divide between our working poor and the rich to an even wider chasm. They also voted against funding the programs which prevent our middle class from falling into poverty as they get old or if they become sick.

Part of the reason has to be a deluded self image. My co-worker told me once a while ago that people vote against benefits becasue they believe they'll be rich one day and will get stuck with the bill. Are we really so deluded that we vote R because we think the lottery ticket is a winner or possibly less likely, because we think our hard work will get us to the top. Hard work will not get you to the top, not usually. So everyone should lose that rich guy costume in the polling booth and vote in a way that might positively affect their life. (I and Love and You by The Avett Brothers just came on my iTunes set to shuffle). Instead, the rallying cry is small government and reducing benefits. Because that worked so well before the 1950's. Everyone voting Tea Party should be forced to read the entire Steinbeck collection and then answer book club questions about how much harder life was without government intervention.

Unfortunately, this might be our American nature. I highly suggest you pause in your reading and watch this video animating a lecture by the author of Nickel and Dimed.

We Delude Ourselves

We simply do not value realism, let alone skepticism. Both of which are absolutely necessary if we want to be a society which takes care of its least fortunate and which protects those without means from the people and businesses who would take advantage of an unregulated marketplace. So it is sad that in our daily lives we disguise ourselves as "the guy who will make it big one day," because that is all it is; a disguise which is also a delusion. I am not encouraging laziness, or implying in any way that people are resigned to a life of financial mediocrity. I'm only saying what is true, that most people in the lower to middle income levels are likely to stay that way and will not be a part of that top .2% which is actually affected by the tax cut expiring. In fact, during the Bush administration the wealthiest Americans saw an average yearly income increase of 6% while the middle class and poorer Americans experienced no wage increase at all. So why do we do it, why do we vote with a rich guy costume on? Unfortunately, it may be the American Dream. We are taught early on to measure success in terms of wealth and material things. We also believe that we are one big idea away from easy street. I'm no hippie, but if we want people to be less deluded (I think we do), then we might have to look at our values first.

Review of Last Night in Twisted River, Etc.

I recently finished the latest novel by John Irving, Last Night in Twisted River. While I enjoyed it, the sad moments stayed with me longer than I would have liked and it lacked the satisfying, ongoing reveal of Until I Find You. If you intend to read the novel and don't want any detail spoiled, stop reading now.



The book takes us into another little know world much in the same way that his last novel brought out the history of the modern tattoo though this time we see the business, the New Hampshire logging industry, from the point of view of a camp cook. The same camp cook is later a restaurant chef and owner which provides another interesting backdrop for the novel. Some of the other Irving elements are also present, familial though not incestuous relationships, a private school education (with wrestling), and extended view of a single life. None of Irving's novels including and since Garp could be considered snapshots and LNiTR is no different. The story is a saga and follows a single family of men from the New Hamphire woods to Boston's North End to Iowa to Vermont and ultimately to Toronto. The book is riddled with death of several varieties which the drive the book to its conclusion and its suspense is not of the usual kind. The story is a long chase over the course of many years without the violence of No Country for Old Men and it's enjoyable if not on the same level as some of Irving's other novels.

Let The Great World Spin by Colum McCann

I read this after LNiTR and it was easily the greatest reading experience I have had in the last five years. The characters are wonderful, their interactions are moving, the language is terrific. A truly great book in my humble opinion. That is all I will say except to tell you that you should read it, then we can meet for a drink and talk about it. I have read a couple of other books since, Talk Talk by T.C. Boyle and A Geography of Time by Robert Levine. They were both fine but nothing compared to the experience of LtGWS. Looking forward to reading The Finkler Question and to writing about it when I'm done.

Thanksgiving and a Birthday

I am publishing this post almost a year after I started drafting it. It's been a good year for my family though not a great year at work or for the country in general. Here's hoping that by the time I publish a post for Thanksgiving 2010, things have turned around.

November 24, 2009 - November 25, 2009

My son is not sleeping tonight; he is waking up every half hour with another perceived need or complaint. He has woken up to urinate, to get a drink of water (related), to tell me he doesn't have any "company is his room for sleeping," to ask for his toy cars, and to get tucked in more tightly. It is actually a wonderful way to begin my birthday because I was not at home when he went to bed tonight at a ridiculously early hour. His early bedtime is the result of a convergence of a singular process and a yearly one; we (the parents) are taking away his nap and we have just set the clock's back reverting to Standard Time from Daylight Savings Time.

It's easy to understand why the nap deprivation is doing some damage. He had two hours of slumber every day beginning at noon and it's easy understand why he is getting tired earlier. But we've been through days with him without naps before and there was never a direct correlation to his bedtime. The real culprit is our reversion to standard time. On the first Sunday in November we set the clocks back an hour (last Sunday in October in the E.U.). It is pitch black out at 5:30 these days and my kid can't handle it.

In all respects my kid is essentially a farm animal or a farmer, more likely the livestock. It gets dark, he wants to sleep. The unfortunate product of the early bedtime is my son waking up repeatedly beginning anywhere between 2 and 4 AM. There is significant controversy in the history and practice of DST, my complaint about my kid's inability to stay awake past Six pm is a drop in the bucket.

November 25-26, 2009

Despite the lack of sleep because of my son's frequent requests and complaints, we piled in the car for Tampa on Wednesday morning. After a stop at the library, a run for 3 dozen bagels to be frozen in my mother-in-law's freezer #2, and a fill-up at the gas station, we left in the pouring rain for the 4.6 hour drive to Odessa, Florida. It was uneventful apart from the numerous accidents we passed in the deluge. The boy had to pee once and I pulled past the shoulder onto the grass where he peed while standing on the door frame and never stepped outside of the Toyota. I got some birthday calls en route.

I had a nice birthday steak dinner and an ice cream pie with a candle in it. Yeah, 35.

On Thanksgiving morning my mother-in-law was twittering around the house pretending to have something to do. My father-in-law was deep frying the turkeys for later in the day. People came and drank and ate and fun was had by all. End of story.

*I hope everyone and their children have a wonderful Halloween and Thanksgiving*