I have plush butts on the brain. Check out my callipygian iPod mix:
Spinal Tap - Big Bottom
Queen - Fat Bottomed Girls
Sir-Mix-A-Lot - Baby Got Back
Harry Belafonte - Jump In The Line (what? you don't believe this belongs in a mix about nice butts? ahem...When she wind up she bottom she go like a rocket What a lucious lyric.
K.C. and the Sunshine Band - Shake Your Booty
Tonight I laid down on my daughter's bed after she'd been tucked in. She grabbed my right hand and starting tracing the lines on my palm with her fingers. We didn't say anything for a few minutes while she looked at my hand. Then she broke the silence:
"Daddy, I really missed you today"
"I missed you too honey. I miss you every day"
Before my current contract I was working from home two days a week and getting home before 6pm most nights, so I saw my kids a lot. Now I'm lucky to get home before 7pm, and I jump on my computer at night and work more. And a thought occurred to me, lying there next to my daughter: "What if I've died already? What if I've died on the road one day and I didn't even know it and I'm merely a spirit lying here and she doesn't even know I'm here, doesn't even know me?" I spun in a moment of anxiety and terror gripped by this foolish idea that I didn't exist any more. I started to cry.
"Honey. I miss you all day every day that I'm not with you. You're the most wonderful little girl I could have ever hoped for, and you and your brother are the best reason for me to get out of bed in the morning. I love you no matter what."
I'm not dead yet, but I am dying a little each day; a lot, each day I'm away from those I hold most dear.
McKenna let go of my hand scooted closer and hugged me. "Daddy, can I please read a story to myself?"
"Of course you can sweetheart."
"I love you Daddy."
"I love you too honey."
I prayed with McKenna, kissed her forehead, and left her to her reading.
There was more work to be done.
I've been watching other cars out on my travels because we're coming to a point where I need to get a new car. The Nissan I'm driving around in is beat up and tired to say the least. Sure, it's a Nissan and could last us another 60,000 miles, but I don't know that I want to be driving it every day putting those kinds of miles on it.
Unfortunately, I'm not finding very many cars that excite me. I don't mean excite like "I want to put them in my pants" excitement, though that would be cool, but just something that would make me want to drive one. My friends have some great cars, like the new Corolla, the new Element, and so on, and I really do like the Element, but I'd say 96% of the cars I'm looking at are just plain boring.
I keep seeing Mini Coopers, which come closest to being the car I really want to get behind the wheel of.
I guess I should preface all of the above by saying that I have a certain price range, so certain levels of luxury and performance are already out...but even the BMWs and Mercedes are kind of *yawn* pedestrian these days.
Where in the hell are the cool and exciting cars?
When I'm procrastinating and avoiding trying to write I'll spend time on Flickr searching for strange photos. But I have to say that my friend Ranzino's always has awesome pictures. He's in "public relations", whatever that means. I think it means he's a greeter at Wal-Mart. That's public relations, right? Anyway, whatever it is he's doing these days, I think he should focus on the photography and make a living at it.
You should probably start here with his favorites and then work through the rest.
In British Columbia, Canada, a few noisy parents are overreacting about the introduction of yoga into their school as a means to combat childhood obesity. The claim is that yoga is a religion, and if we're going to strip Jesus from the classrooms, we shouldn't allow yoga either.
My first reaction was "It's nice to see that this kind of reactionary pharasitical thinking isn't confined to just America." Then I got sad to thinking about how this kind of fundamentalism is spreading. It seems that as the Islamic world is itself embroiled in a kind of reformation movement, so too is a larger tug-of-war between atheists, moderates, and arch-conservatives consuming the Christian world.
It makes sense to me that some people would run into the shelter of fundamentalist religions in a time of great uncertainity. The last 15 years have been overwhelming and distressing to many people, especially since 9/11. Cultures are spreading faster than ever, and forces like the internet make it nearly impossible for the would-be censors and morality police to tamp down the fires of change.
Economies are shifting, bulging, and blossoming around the world, and then vanishing again. We are bombarded by contradictory figures and shouted at on all sides by bloviating populists, all who have different agendas.
So for a few parents in a more remote section of British Columbia to protest the introduction of yoga is not, surprising to me. But it disheartens me. It disheartens me because there is so much information available now, there is so much transfer of culture, there is so much opportunity for learning, and the spreading of tolerance, and understanding.
The very same earth-shaking forces that scare people so now are the same forces that can change the world for the better.
The new economy that made Bill Gates so stunningly rich has made it possible for him to potentially solve an issue like malaria. The internet has made it possible for people around the world to speak to dissidents in places like China and Iran and help them seek freedom for themselves. It can give children in British Columbia a way to exercise that will them be healthy and live longer. Yoga will probably even help children in school, as it can calm and center a person.
Sure, the origins of Yoga came from a religious discipline, but that no more makes it a religion itself than Tai Chi is a religion, or makes the running the Tendai monks do a religion.
H.P. Lovecraft said once (in a slightly different context):
"The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."
So again I'm sad, because it seems that instead of pushing forward into the new world and seeking those new vistas of reality, people are averting their eyes, and quickly assembling walls around their hearts and minds, so as to shut out the light and truth. They're not just fleeing into a new dark age, but flinging themselves into the shadowy abyss of ignorance.
I've returned to work after my 11 days off and already I'm ready for a vacation. I'd love to be able to take off a week every two months or so, or save them up and take the last half of November and all of December off.
The best work schedule I ever had had me working 3 12-hour days Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and 4 hours on Wednesday, giving me almost all of Wednesday, and the rest of the week off.
On the political side, I've been paying attention to the news and following what's going on but I'm not in a mood (at least, right now) where I want to discuss it. There's lots of material I could riff on, but..not right now.
Because now I'm going to go lay down and do a crossword puzzle.
I stood out on my front porch this evening, smoking a Montecristo cigar and listening to the fast-falling drizzle. I'd been at a friend's party earlier playing nickel poker. They were setting up a diesel air-horn from a train to set off in his apartment complex at midnight. I couldn't stay at the party but I knew that I'd be able to hear it from home. So I stood and waited.
Some of my neighbors partied, the elderly couple next door sending their friends home at 11.30 while the teenagers at the end of the cul-de-sac running around and screaming.
The cigar burned unevenly and I had to keep re-lighting it. A solitary figure down the street walked his dog in the rain, and I could already hear sirens screaming in the distance. Five minutes before midnight the fireworks started; dull thumping and sharp crackles pierced the night air. My tongue prickled and swelled from the smoke, and I was feeling a bit light-headed.
Suddenly the fire sirens blared, and the thumps became a rolling cacophonous thunder. At the stroke of midnight an air-horn blared across the valley, several short blasts before a single massive bleat.
I laughed for several more minutes as the cigar died down and I went in to have a glass of cognac to finish off the night.
2006 was a good year for me, for us. I hope that 2007 is at least as good if not better. And I hope the same for you.
Happy New Year!
