Lucky seven
 Today marks the seventh anniversary of my departing Boston for Los Angeles. I left that city a broken man, my arm having been clipped by a UPS truck while I was riding my bike to work in my last months there.
Less than a year after crossing the Colorado River into California (we drove), my relationship with the person I'd traveled here with ended. I don't know many relationships that have survived westward expansion. I am told that Lewis returned from their travels feeling that Clark was a "douchebag".
 We took west four cats, two mine and two hers. I know that one (Roswell, staring from the background) is dead and I think at least two more might be (at least the one in the foreground, if there is any justice). Frampton (seen there in the middle) is still going strong, and just wrote her first novel.
I came out here to be a writer for television and film, and to perform comedy on stage. I have done all those things, but I think I should have been more specific in my plans, such as "I want to write for television shows that aren't cancelled almost immediately". But I guess saying that prior to leaving would have seemed too obvious to me then.
 I am going to spend my remaining time in Los Angeles (I have an exit strategy) being more obvious.
Also, when I first moved here, I spent a lot of time riding my bike on the beach. I don't do that anymore. I've been to the beach once in the last year. This disgusts me. It's like living in Bogue Chitto and not eating at the truck stop every day.Labels: boston, los angeles, personal history, philosophy, travel
Current favorite songTM: Tim Armstrong's "Wake Up"
The Optimism of incompetence
 I realized recently that when one is accused of doing something half-assed, it is never made clear if a better job would be done with the whole ass or with no ass at all. If the former, Zeno's Paradox dovetails nicely with Murphy's Law and dictates that the full ass can never be reached, thus ensuring the job will never get done.
More hopeful, then, to avoid doing all work that would invite ass comparisons.Labels: language, philosophy
Circle of life
 There has been a dead bird on the neighbor's roof for about a month, and today the neighbor's cats got up there. Where I live, the neighbors who own outdoor cats don't neuter them, but instead let them run free. Then, my downstairs neighbor will surreptitiously abduct the outdoor cats and pay to have them neutered. Ian has been named Captain Save-A-Cat for his neutering exploits.
Here a father and child pick at the dead bird. Soon these cats, too, will die, and their corpses will lie in state on this very roof. The neighbors will replace them with other cats, dimly wondering what has become of their predecessors.
(I take these photos with a telescopic lens from my wheelchair.)Labels: found, glendale
Neonatal blogging
 Harrison, too, has branched off in the Internet realm and is struggling to find his own voice when it is so difficult for him to find his own mouth.
Here is his site.Labels: tot
She's leaving home
 There comes a time when a child must leave her father's website, so I have created a subdomain for Marisol, the former ACI. It's not yet finished, but you can see a video of her singing Happy Birthday to herself better than anyone in her class.
Here it is.Labels: tot
Sleeping and dreaming
 We had a drugged versus natural birth with Harrison, as opposed to Marisol, and that has made a great deal of difference. TAARG is ready to go to the natural childbirth class we attended for 12 weeks pre-Marisol and tell them she wants her money back. I felt it then, but the militancy of the "natural" childbirth contingent and its own campaign of intolerance of, say, pain avoidance, is as damaging to expectant mothers as thalidomide is tasty.
I asked our birth team this time around, oddly enough the same group as were there last time, if they could now admit that couples walking in with "birth plans" irritated them as much as I thought it might.
"Oh yeah," the nurse said.
Sleep has been available in doses larger than I expected. Still, my eyes feel like Krispy Kreme doughnuts microwaved for 15 seconds.
The cats have been spotted trying to suck Harrison's soul through his nostrils several times, each time being forced to put it back. Note to readers: the soul looks like mucous.
It is not lost on me that the birth of each of my children so far has resulted in a World Series win for the Red Sox. The Red Sox currently have the best record in baseball. These are facts.
For evolutionary purposes, the "stamp of paternity" is very important. I have yet to see myself in any of my son's features. The stamp of paternity, it is said, prevented prehistoric fathers from dashing their babies' brains out. It is interesting that whenever the verb "dashing" is used, aside from "dashing through the snow", it shows up followed by "babies' brains out".
He has three months to develop horrible eyesight, is all I'm saying.
But since I only shop at Costco, and since Costco does not sell a Kirkland Brain Dashing Stone, my son is safe.
The Moro Reflex is present in most infants. It describes the sudden spasming of the arms during sleep. We like to say, "Harrison has the horrors again." The stamp of paternity would surely be evident in my son believing beings from Geometries Beyond Time were going to get him, thus his horrors.
The pictures above show Marisol tricking us into believing she loves her brother, the former in her Red Sox jacket the night they won it all in 2004, a month after she was born, and Harrison's early reading list, preparing him for a life of British oppression.Labels: red sox, tot
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