Bow, Behavior Monster!

Bishop betta' have my money!

Watch the clip to the end, apparently nothing upsets some parishioners more than the sight of bishop blood. I mean, any blood other than that of the sacrificial lamb - they drink that stuff along with the body of a cracker. 

The birthday party was pleasant. I'm glad I went, Rhys feels the same. The boy has a civilizing effect over me the way that some old girlfriends used to, one in particular, though without any of her pacifying qualities. It's an odd realization, watching yourself mature only to the maturation needs of another. The necessity arrives at such a consistent pace that I keep expecting it to become predictable, but the increase in the frequency and severity is always just ahead of the faculty of foresight. It's almost maddening, if it wasn't so absurdly predictable as to also be comforting. 

Funny, that. I'll probably miss it when it stops surprising me. 

I should be more careful with what I write here - I feel as if I've said that before. Sonoma is a very small town. I'm not quite sure how to explain that yesterday's post wasn't about anybody at all, certainly not about the birthday girl whom I had hardly met, and not even about my son who wrote the letters on the envelope - an envelope I did not use, by the way. I just taped the card to the wrapped gift, not truly wanting the mothers of children to have to come to terms with an unintentional phallic symbol at a kid's birthday party. If the letter A would have been bigger, and had hairy balls attached to it, then maybe. Maybe.

Last night, I discovered the complete and total secret to cooking: salted butter. I've lived in liberal enclaves for too long, and have been using olive oil way too much. I fried some whitefish in salted butter last night, put garlic and butter in with the potatoes as they were baking, dripped the juice over the Brussels sprouts. I felt like a male Paula Dean, or maybe like her son; Jimmy Dean. Though most would rank me neck and neck with his useless cousin, Bubba. 

Bubba Dean Pork Burger & Buns, when your microwave don't feel like making anything fancy for breakfast... 

I should have gone into niche-advertising, catering to family-owned southern restaurants and food manufacturers only.

It's been too long since I've been to the south. I'll have to make sure that I get some good southern food when I go back with the boy, in July. Just to sit and have a glass of sweet tea with free refills. I never thought that I would miss it, but after almost 15 years in New York I hardly even remember what real tea even tastes like any more. I'm polite when somebody pours me a glass of tea, but that shit is horrible when made by anybody north of Arlington, Virginia and west of Beaumont, Texas.

What the fuck is Canola oil and why hasn't anybody warned me about the uselessness of this cheap Canadian brake fluid? It was this poison that caused me to end up cooking with butter. I tried to use it like olive oil, but this cooking urine has no real apparent purpose. It should only be used by firemen in training to practice cleaning up kitchen oil spills. Never apply this rapeseed culture to a heated pan in advance of also placing food in that pan with the intention of eating it. I'm told that it is a healthy option, so I'm going to rebottle it and sell it locally as suntan lotion.  

I set the tent up in the living room for the boy to sleep in. We read stories by flashlight last night. His mother pointed out to me that he is struggling with the pronunciation of some words. To my surprise, when I listened for it I could easily hear it, but had ignored it up to that point somehow. Love is powerful stuff, it allows for any of number of qualities to be pleasantly ignored while other are amplified. Love is the distortion field we all crave. It breaks my heart a little bit now, to hear the boy reciting after me the same lines that I just read. I wonder why I wasn't reading this way with him all along. He is so sweet and wants so badly to prepossess all manner of proficiency. He asked me why we are practicing when he already knows how to speak. I explained that the practice was for me, of course. What would you have said? It worked. 

He struggles with a number of letter combinations. I really noticed it the other day when he was asking me, Is Sunday still in spring? It sounded as if he was saying swing instead of spring. I tried a few different combinations of similar words until I happened upon spirit, which he was very close to being able to say. So, we're practicing that one now in the hopes that there will be some spillover success into other words that start with the s-p combination. I expect him to have sporolactobacillaceae,  sphygmomanometrically, and sphygmoplethysmograph mastered by this afternoon, or the beatings begin. 

After we set the tent up the boy and I were lounging around in it, telling stories. We started paying a bit, as my club foot allowed, and there came a point where he climbed on my back and I lifted up on all fours. This brought him a tremendous amount of joy - riding Dad like a Tyrannosaurus Wreck. He struggled to stay mounted but we marched around the tent with him laughing orders of direction and vowing to vanquish dragons. I kept acting as if I was too exhausted to go on and I would fall face first into the big pillows we had lined the tent with. He kept commanding that I rise again and continue marching, only to collapse again in giggles and excitement. 

Bow, Behavior Monster!
Bow, Behavior Monster!

Bow, Behavior Monster!Bow, Behavior Monster! Bow!

Bow, Behavior Monster!

Over and over and over again. It started doing me in a bit, realizing that as soon as he felt like he was in control he mimicked his perception of my behavior, which must seem exclusively or predominantly corrective to him. That's not how I want him to feel about me, but I am his dad... so, I do find myself correcting and explaining things to him more and more. I discuss his behavior and its effects with him in a way that somebody must have also done to me at one point.

Bow, Behavior Monster!
Bow, Behavior Monster!

I kept thinking, I've done way too many hard drugs for you to be chanting that poison into my head. It was doing me in a bit, to hear my son have such glee in his voice to suddenly feel as if his version of behavior was the new law, and that dad was subject to his discretions.

Bow, Behavior Monster!Bow!


Having a son has maybe made me a better monster.

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Parenting: The Old Insufficiency

I'm taking the boy to a little girl's 5th birthday party today. Emma. I think she's turning five. I wanted the boy to participate in the gift giving process. We went to a little store here on Sonoma square and picked out a game, a chutes-and-ladders type thing. They wrapped it for us as we paid. We picked out a fun birthday card. 

He did well enough on the first E. His initial M was as much symbolic of the letter as it was meant to be representational of that specific character in the alphabet. His second attempt displayed his true proficiency in the matter. It is with the letter A that he achieved his opus in terms of representation and composition.  

The A will often naturally seek the crevices of any other letter it finds. I mean, it just fits up in the M, doesn't it? That is both science and nature working together to keep the alphabet healthy. It's how new words are made, through the commingling of consonants and vowels. 

Accident, you say, chance, or... beginner's luck. 

I am eager to meet some new parents today. I will make sure to leave Emma's present in a way that it invites the most views by other adults whom I have not yet met. Perhaps it is sexist of me, but I know that there will be more women at this birthday party than men - there always are. My guess is that nobody will mention the phallus on the gift's envelope. We'll see, perhaps there will be something other than humorless housewives attending. 

Maybe there will be wine for the adults, something that people are very cautious with at kids' birthday parties. Though, it is the specific liquid elixir that contains the invitation and capacity for just this sort of conversation. It is more likely that there will be no wine in open sight, or hidden wherever I'll be sure to look first. Never wishing to send the wrong message, parents can be relied upon to express their consistent support for conventional communal morality. 

If anybody ever expresses concern over anything I do I'll just say, Oh, we also have a place in Europe. Nobody ever knows how to respond, or why. 

When they ask where, which they always do, I'll say, On the coast, of course!

Maybe I should start wearing a body-cam, like everybody wants the cops to do. I could just let it run and then upload the videos to show you here, to give you an explicit idea of what a social disaster I can be. It's not so much that I don't respect norms as that I don't even seem to know what they are, where they stop, or how flexible they are around the edges before they tear. Things can change in an instant, often in response to me tugging at one side like a stray dog that has wandered in the house, confusing a child's prized toy as something to hump furiously and then bury in the backyard, clawing at the dirt with my lipstick out, looking around every now and then with a crazed gleam in my eyes, the brightly colored toy clenched in my teeth, an occasional growl of burying bliss to arrive in my throat, the self-satisfaction with the mound of dirt when it is all over, circling it, making sure that nobody would ever suspect what treasure is contained therein, awaiting its own rediscovery at the slightest whim of my snout, the will of my front paws, the dogged determination of my digging. 

I don't know, maybe the world is just filled with closet cat people. 

Jesus - Send Help! I'm trapped in a bubble gum factory. 

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Flashdancer

It's shameful, the way I post pics of the boy when he was a baby, just cheap clickbait tactics.... Though, looking at this picture does something to me. Having children becomes a series of very odd experiences, many of the type that I was perhaps not quite ready for. It's a different way of experiencing time. A much larger venture than anybody described, and they even tried to be very emphatic when reminding me that it would change everything about my life, which it nearly did.

Even with all that considered, the boy is a simple gift given from a complex universe.

There seems to be an obligation to examine the feelings of love, though the results of those inquiries have no special obligation to the questions being asked. Everybody approximates, based on nearly incomparable experiences. Intelligence is rarely given credit for all the good it has done. People are openly suspicious of it, only because it can also be terribly misused. Somewhere within it I have discovered a new way of being, and of feeling about that being.


The foot is showing subtle signs of improvement. I will test its resilience later today in recreating the Flashdance video, Maniac. I may need to break out my tights, leg warmers, and my treasured 10,000 Maniacs cassette tape.

I was able to crutch myself a few blocks down Market St. to meet friends last night. I had nearly forgotten how pleasant being in the city can be for such a thing. I watched the NY Rangers lose to the Ottawa Senators. I only ever watch hockey during the Stanley Cup playoffs, so don't let this fool you. I don't follow any sports teams or cities, really, but I do favor teams from NY and SF, but that's because I'm one of those lame regionals. 

I'll be back to Flashdancing in no time. I'm certain of it.


If a dream comes true, just one time....

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Stabbing Pain, Stinking Nightshade

I have read a handful of Hemingway stories. I know that having a limp means that I have a rotten soul, am a tremendously greedy lover, probably can't get it up. 

Nomads would have left me for dead - used tiger bait. Out to sea they would have chucked me into the waters as a blob of pre-chum shark floss. Gypsies would have stewed me down in a bloody cauldron. A witch might have only passed, cackling on her henbane fueled broomstick. I have wearied of my injury, can only imagine how anybody reading here must feel by now. 

Injuries are boring, unless there's a good clip to watch online at the moment they happen. Though, those clips usually make me feel a bit sick to my stomach, like watching somebody marvel at the immensity of an object that can fit inside another person's anus. People send me the most disturbing things, assuming perhaps that my mind is drawn to such maverick sexual eccentricities. I am repulsed by much of what I see, and I'm no prude. I laugh mostly at the details of my own abstractions, the fictive scenarios I draw myself into. To watch some girl fist herself is too literal to bring me many smiles, where it fascinates others. There are websites dedicated to the endless visual pursuit of it.  

People are much weirder than we ever knew, and now they're set to perpetually outdo one another. Soon we will know if there is a limit to the anus' elasticity.  Soon.

An injury lacks the customary illicit component, though - or, mine does. It's just the nauseating result without the humorous adventure that led to it. 

Fuck it. Maybe I'll see if I can get a Heineken bottle to make contact with the sphincter of Oddi, just to spice things up a bit on the crutches. 

Oh yeah, I'm on crutches now. I'm ambulatory, in a sense, again. Trusses meant to liberate me from otherwise being lame.

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The Salad Days

(Leifer)

I shouldn't be taken seriously. Yesterday's post was written as a painful set of jokes. My foot is fucked, and it's doing me in. I'll be limping for a couple months. It sucks. 

The suck comes in waves. 

So much of what I've endured in life was self-inflicted, in that way where I still had a bit of say in it. To have something strike so syphilitically, in an instant... It feels like the night of Hillary losing all over again. 

I'm being punished for being right. 

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If I were a doctor....

... I would have already written myself a generous prescription for a variety of pain pills. Within the stretch of a month I would have some real problems, though I question if I would notice. An opioid addiction seems preferable to pain, but that's just me. I don't live in fear of drugs. I live in fear of pain, real or imagined. Pain seems the least desirable of any possible state to live in.  

I authored the below words to express, in part, how I feel:

I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant:...

I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.

I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures which are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism.

I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug.

I will not be ashamed to say "I know not," nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another are needed for a patient's recovery.

I will respect the privacy of my patients, for their problems are not disclosed to me that the world may know. Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. Above all, I must not play at God.

I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person's family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick.

I will prevent disease whenever I can but I will always look for a path to a cure for all diseases.

I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.

If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life and art, respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter. May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help.

Now, anybody that knows me would know that I am fine with the open swearing and oathing of such things. It is their enactment that causes me such eternal strife. My personality contains a mischievous twist and seeks to relieve my own suffering long before that of my fellow man. 

Therapeutic nihilism, that's a keeper phrase. I daresay that the American democratic party could borrow a cue from that philosophy. 

Above all, I must not play at God. 

Well, that's just nitpicking now, isn't it? 

The Hippocratic oath is deeply flawed. The modern version that you see above makes no mention of the relief of suffering. This is because there are always a few bad eggs that will spoil the omelette of life if you give them enough liquid morphine. 

Ah, well. 

What is pain but a nearly imperceptible note struck within the music of the universe's indifference, a blunt suggestion heard alone in the vain and empty hope of quietus. The path away from pain is the path towards life, we're told. Our nervous systems have been tuned to these recommendations over thousands of years. But what are we to think about the wounds of the self-inflicted. Be wary of the dangers there. A victim does not easily escape that paradox by magically transforming themselves into their own patient. We are all sorcerer's apprentices, in a sense - the power of magic turned against the insufficiencies of the ones invoking it. 

... and I will give no drug and perform no act for an immoral purpose. 

Morality is too vague a term to adequately prevent the proper distribution of drugs. I would throw this portion of the oath out on a technicality. How many similar cases have been won on appeal? Certainly morals should be no impediment to drug use. Or, that is at least consistent with my experience. What are we to think of a doctor also promising not to perform immoral acts in the pursuit and purpose of their profession. Yesterday, we addressed priests, today we have to clean up the medical community, also?

I had never read, nor noticed, the above line before. It has also been removed from the modern version, which is suspicious when considered with the other, more important, omission of the oath to relieve a patient's suffering. 

Well, for any of you that know me, I am writing this only to avoid the other - the spiraling into self-pity. I do not take illness well. It portends the terrible, nothing more. There is no beauty nor grace nor redemption to be found in illness, nor recovery from it. That is a myth that the twelve-steppers would have you believe. You might be happy for a person that has improved their life through abstinence, but nobody envies their condition. Or rather, only the piteous would envy the treated and untreated ill among us. 

I would far rather be incoherent than to walk with a limp. A stagger can be interesting, when done well. A limp is mundane, anybody can do it, few do it well. Some might object to this honesty, but fuck them and their objections. People in pain say crazy shit. I might not hold that opinion forever, but if incoherence can not see me through to healing then perhaps the echo of these neurotic ravings will keep me company until that time appears.

If I were a doctor, dear, and you were a lady...

Save your love through loneliness, save your love through sorrow....

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Proof of Demonesses

(Sistine Madonna, detail, Raphael)

Of course writing about an affliction is boring, but it has occupied me since Thursday night. I have been hobbled by some foot demon who wishes to do harm to my temporary soul. He's made inroads to that very purpose. Demonic depression is settling in now, also. I refer to the demon with the male pronoun He because I do not believe there are female foot demons.

Holy Crapola. I just did a search, to find a list of biblical demons, and instead found a page that simply attempts to explain their existence. Towards the top of the article I found a subsection (Theories Surrounding the Origin of Demons) that included this sentence: There are a number of suggestion origins of demons, with the most logical being that they are fallen angels. 

None of what they bullet point after that qualifies as a theory and I can not determine what it is they purport to be surrounding. Neither does it offer much detail to establish a line of logic, it merely shoots down the idea that they are the souls of the dead, which should be frolicking in the lake of fire awaiting eternal judgement by now, but the claim is made nonetheless. There is a circling theory that also suggests that demons are the product of the unholy union between angels and mortal women. This theory offers the most promise in terms of explaining a number of different phenomenon with the simplest and most testable explanation.

I guess the author missed the part about a theory needing to rely on general principles independent of the thing that is being explained. Who needs demons when we have actual humans wandering the earth believing this stuff. With this sort of logic in the air it is difficult for me to see this foot malady as anything other than a demonic locust perched 'neath my Achilles. It is the demon of Red Bull. I can feel its wings flapping.

Demons will stop at nothing to cause the righteous to stumble, so you can imagine the effect they have on the wicked.

After I make an appt. with the doctor I'm going to see if I can get a priest to come in and take a look. I hope that he won't need to exorcise me - holy fluids in the rectum. There must be a better way. I wonder if there's a requirement now for priests to bring a nun along with them when conducting these covert operations, the way that you're not supposed to get your ding-dong out in front of  a doctor any more unless there's a nurse there in the room to make sure he doesn't gobble on it like an out of control junk junky.

Lawyers have ruined everything that the politicians didn't get to first.


I have my issues with some of the rhetoric that I hear coming out of feminists, particularly when it appears on the lips of privileged white women, but Jesus... patriarchy is some pernicious stuff. Adults seriously discussing the possibility that demons are the result of angels impregnating women... How do you counter solid science like that? If only there were an ancient document that disagreed with Christianity....

I didn't even know that angels had cock and balls. That anatomic detail has been mainly missing from their holy representations. It's no wonder Raphael only includes the upper portion of his famously naughty cherubs. Those little satyrs likely had fiendish knee-hangers dangling amidst the stars and heavens above us. I'm sure that mortal women were only using them to get backstage to talk to God.

Everybody else has to smoke DMT.

(details, details - Canannk)

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Alternativities

Ok, I've known that I'm fucked since the middle of the night on Thursday, but the reality of it is settling in now, doing its other internal damage. This laceration of the ligament was clearly still a novelty to me when I chose to go see New Order on Friday, a since regrettable mistake. Temporarily emboldened by an alternative set of feelings to my actual conditions. I might have made a pretty good voter. 

Inured, with a j. 

My ability to backup using my feet is completely gone. I am in constant danger of falling over. The doctor gave me anti-inflammatories but they don't protest conditions nearly enough for me. 

Though, like an unexpected nose ring, I'm suddenly interesting again, in a sense - afforded special treatment, cared for. I don't mind being noticed for being uncomfortable, as long as I can occasionally leverage that a bit and that it's all temporary, sort of like a nose ring. Perhaps I've yet to settle into the charm of it. I'll give it a year. 

I have something that almost qualifies as being something, the coincidence of it. I might be reasonably inactive for quite some time, the very thing that I spent the Winter making sure didn't happen. Now, Spring arrives as a series of maledictions, all mine. The curses and evil invocations that have been bubbling up out of me over this are the only thing making me feel young again. 

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Love Will Asunder Us

The image above captures the moment that I hit the end of my third sentence in the first paragraph of my prepared explanation to the boy concerning the meaning and importance of Joy Division.

A couple buddies and I went to see New Order last night in Berkeley. They were always more of a studio band, weren't they? That's where all the real magic happened, as it was when it was. They did play "Your Silent Face," which was a highlight for me and might be for anybody else. The entire night was memorable if only for that six minute moment. What an album. 

The podiatric malady that I described yesterday was not improved by the fifteen minute walk to the car after the show. In fact, my condition seems to have deteriorated a bit, even as it seemed to be improving by yesterday afternoon when I departed our little valley hamlet. 

I have begun to accept the doctor's suggestion that it is plantar fasciitis. I've had it before and the similarities are becoming more clear as I learn to live with my cursed affliction. The last time it came on more slowly, I think, and was the direct and obvious result of my training for the NYC Marathon, from daily jogging. I know what he's going to tell me: no bike riding until it has healed, could be months. 

None of my shoes seem to have much arch support, and they lack that dreamy synthetic cushioning material. Mine are all Adidas, Puma, and Converse. I will need to go buy a pair of Crocs or something hideous, like old Iggy Pop who turned 70 yesterday. 

That's right. One of my buddies that I went to the show with dropped that chronological pin in the evening. Iggy Pop is 70. This means something terrible, I'm sure of it. 

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Requiems

I have listened to both Berlioz's and Mozart's Requiem this morning.

I need to get outside this afternoon but my heel has betrayed me, again. My doctor seems to suspect plantar fasciitis, though I am convinced the gods have come down from the hills to give me the clap, or worse: the gout. I have prayed for death all morning with the greatest submission to the skies that I can muster. All that is left now will be Faure's version, at sundown.  

I can't walk. I crawled from my bedroom to the kitchen in the middle of the night to get to my computer and then to self-diagnose on WebMD, gobbling Alleve as if it was Midol and my ankle embroiled in its own purgationibus mulierum. 

A Midsummer Night's Midstream. 

I have considered the impact of amputation, as well as its application. It would perhaps involve an excessive amount of recovery time, and friends with very strong ideals.

I searched my memory for what might have caused the gout and nothing made any sense. I have now come to accept my doctor's assessment and am quite relieved at having done so, even though there will need to be tests to verify that there is no urine surging through my veins.

At least with the fasciitis I can blame the republicans and not my own diet. My gods, you don't know the torture in going through my daily diet from yesterday trying to find the culprit. It was as if someone was about to steal something very valuable from my cup boards and refrigerator and I had to discover who it was going to be. My only hope was to find that some food I loved daily has betrayed me. Before lunchtime arrived I was sunken into a Sophie's Choice of sorts, having narrowed the possible perpetrators down to only two.

By the time of writing this I have grown certain that any one of my vegetariable ex-girlfiends cast this heel hex on me for being an omnivore. As I reclined in bed with my leg elevated I read up on gout. It is a genuine malady, reserved for reprobates and chronic imbibers. I felt destined that it had come for me, the prodigal malady.

You're supposed to fall out of love with yourself to treat it effectively - no scallops, beef, or lamb; no pork, even bacon. The article's recommendations then attacked beer and gravy in a serial manner, listing off so many of the keys to the kingdom. A merciless crippler of culinary intake, that.


Beware:

According to the theory of evolution, why do we die?


Excellent question. And before I explain the real answer, which is rather mind-bending, here are some previous arguments and why they are wrong.

Myth 1: We die to make room for younger generations.
Genes are selfish, and each individual body is a vehicle for a collection of genes. These genes are selected to favor the survival of copies of themselves. Since parents and offspring use the same resources, the death of a parent creates room ecologically for just one offspring. Each gene in the parent has a 50% chance of appearing in this offspring. But it has a 100% chance of appearing in the parent, because it's already there. It's never, then, in the evolutionary interests of a parent to die so an offspring can replace it.

Myth 2: We die because our cells/DNA get damaged with age.
This like saying bad drivers die because of blood loss. It's a proximate mechanism of death, not the evolutionary cause of mortality.

Our somatic cells (the cells that are part of our body) do indeed suffer occasional mutations as they divide. These mutations can kill or damage cells, which is annoying but not generally a big problem as we can make more. However, the worst mutations do something much more dangerous: they help cells to survive and proliferate. That's how you get cancer. Because this risk accumulates over time, cells are normally allowed only a limited number of divisions before they undergo cellular senescence, that is, they die. But the genes that cause cellular senescence can also stop working. So that's one of the ways in which we get old: our somatic cell lineages get older, damaged and mutated, and some become cancerous.

However, the cell/DNA damage idea assumes that this isn't something evolution can counteract. And that's clearly false. Lifespan and cancer rates differ between species, and not in the ways you would expect if they were determined by cell/DNA damage. For instance, once you take into account body size and phylogeny, DNA repair doesn't correlate with lifespan. Lifespan does, however, correlate with ecology: mammal species who typically lead risky lives die younger (even if you protect them from those risks). At one extreme, in the harsh Australian bush we find the male agile antechinus, who dies of stress at the end of a single breeding season. At the other extreme, the naked mole rat can live for three decades in its peaceful underground colonies.

This gets even more puzzling when you start to look at genomics. We have a whole suite of genes devoted to keeping our genome pristine. My favorite is a clever gene called P53 that acts as a "gatekeeper" for cell division. If the cell has too many mutations, P53 will halt division and activate repair mechanisms. If that doesn't fix things, it will make the cell commit suicide. Mutations that break P53 are involved in about half of all human cancers. Now, here's the rub: there's a whole family of genes related to P53 in other mammals, and some work better than others. Naked mole rats, as it happens, have two particularly awesome versions that completely protect them against cancer.

We also know that it's perfectly feasible for genetic modification to immortalize cell lineages, and that going through a haploid stage is not essential for maintaining cell viability. How do we know this? From the strange case of the 11,000 year old dog. The dog as an individual is long dead, but her cells survive today as an infectious cancer on other dogs' genitalia. There's also a quaking aspen in Utah whose roots are at least 80,000 years old.

The same applies to permanent organ damage. Some organs heal and regenerate, some don't. Some species can regenerate organs that others can't. A salamander can grow a whole new leg. There's even a jellyfish that can reverse its development when it's damaged. All in all, natural selection is clearly capable of creating creatures who can fix cellular and DNA damage and repair damaged organs.

So: evolution can fix these problems for us, and it doesn't. What the heck, evolution, aren't we friends?

Well, no, actually, evolution is not our friend. If anything, it's our genes' friend. And there's a very good reason our genes don't actually care about us.

Mutations are a problem evolution can fix. But death isn't. Accidents happen. Diseases happen. Sabre-toothed cats happen (well, not any more, but you get the point). No matter how hard our genes try to help us survive, sometimes they're going to fail. These failures are often, as far as your genes are concerned, random. And that means our genes can't afford to get too invested in the survival of any individual. In the long term, the only way a gene can survive is to spread -- to copy itself through a population.

So from a gene's-eye view, every investment in your survival is a potential trade-off with the creation and survival of your potential descendants. And, rather obviously, the more likely you are to die randomly, the less it makes sense for your genes to invest in the survival side of the equation.

Every day of your life, the Universe in effect rolls a pair of many-sided dice. Snake eyes, you're dead. Every day the probability that the Universe has at some point in the past killed you increases. And at some time after your birth, on average, you're dead.

Look at this from your genes' perspective. Your genes don't know about you specifically, their behavior is selected based on statistics. They don't want to invest in somebody who is, on average, dead. Younger people are, on average, more likely to be alive. So if your genes have to choose between investing in (on average) the survival and/or reproduction of young you versus old you, they'll pick young you.

And quite often they do have to choose. Early in development, for instance, you really need genes that allow lots of cellular proliferation. Your body can't grow without it. But too much cellular proliferation when you're fully-grown is a big problem. So it's a delicate balance, and what's good for you when you're a kid can be bad for you when you're grown up. There are other genes that manage these risks by switching genes on and off throughout your life, but that makes the network even more complex and failure-prone. You end up with an intricate genomic dance going on throughout your whole life. So it's hardly surprising that some genes end up helping you now and harming you later.

One example may be Huntington's Disease, a horrible dominant genetic disorder that slowly destroys your brain and kills you. The disease usually starts to affect people in middle age. However, young people with the Huntington's gene have more children on average. It's thought that the Huntington's gene strengthens the immune system by increasing activity of P53, making them healthier and more fertile. Other possible examples include atherosclerosis, sarcopenia, prostate hypertrophy, osteoporosis, carcinoma and Alzheimer's disease.

As life goes on, your genes effectively stop caring what happens to you. After a certain point, it's so unlikely that you're still alive that your genes can safely assume you'll already be dead. So your genomic programming can contain all sorts of wacky stuff that only kicks in after this point, just because there's no noticeable selection against it.

The really fascinating part (by which I mean the really depressing part) is how this effect reinforces itself. The more likely it is that you're dead, the less your genes care about you. The less your genes care about you, the more likely it is that you're dead. And this has been going on throughout our evolutionary history, so we've accumulated all sorts of weird malfunctions that kick in late in our lives. The human genome is riddled with them, and most of the genes involved are also part of normal development and reproduction. These malfunctions cluster around a certain age: the age when evolution stops caring about us because, statistically speaking, we're already dead.

So mortality is an evolutionary prophecy that fulfills itself in a multitude of ways. And that's why there's no single key to eternal life. Poor old Gilgamesh.


Suzanne Sadedin, Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from Monash University

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Knowing better

I shouldn't have seen the car accident yesterday, it fucked me up. I had a nervously friendly day at work. I chatted more than usual, acted overly for most of the day, stumbled with simple, uninventive sentences. When I arrived home I felt emptied, anxious, jumpy. The evening spent fighting off the slightest of sounds, of which there were many, each scratching at my tension wires. The imagination demands too much of us, then provides what it lacks. I don't do well with it at all times. It relates somehow to my longtime counterbalancing of recklessness and obsession, though I'm never fully sure how. As I get close it diverts my attention to something that I am hopelessly irresponsible for. My life since puberty and then adolescence, spent cautioning myself to little gain, no one seems to have noticed that. It must not have worked. Chant the mantra of stillness, it only keeps me from running, sometimes. When running, I can't seem to stop. In that preoccupied state I am competing against some thing, a thing that doesn't seem to know any better, either.

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Sour Milk, and more

What the fuck. I come home last night with the boy, flight delayed. Settle in after ten hours of traveling home in the hopes of getting to sleep early - only to turn around and drive back into the city for work - so, I wake up and make my normal half pot of coffee. Both the milk and half-and-half I bought before leaving have gone bad. A total mystery. Ten dollars of spoiled milkstuff. The dates don't indicate that they should have gone off. So, I start searching the refrigerator for signs that the power went off and stayed off for a while. No evidence. None, other than the rotten milk, that is. Now I must run to the gas station, then to Starbucks, then back into the city. The unexpected indignity of the sour milk was almost too much for me. I could feel the mistrust of travel, of being away, creep into me. Nothing should have rotted while I was away.

The reluctance of age, I guess, resentment towards any change not directly caused by me, no matter how natural. 

Well, who knows, maybe my day will improve by departing from home, the one place that I so wanted to return to last night. People who have a strong sense of home, I think, often take it for granted. It's one of the easiest things to do with the concept, pretend it doesn't matter.



Nope, I wrote that before I left the house. On the 101 South heading into the city early this morning I came upon an horrific car accident. The driver's car was upside down and what was left of them was strewn half-in and half-out of the car. The lifeless arm stretched away from the driver's side door, lying flat and still in the rain, palm upwards, the pale flesh of the forearm a shocking reminder. No one was near it, everyone was just standing off and waiting for the cops and medics. The important but useless three digit calls having already been made.


Rachel reminded me that I am tired from traveling, that my emotional response to such a thing might be exaggerated, and she was right. It was too much for me. I want to go home and take a day long nap in my own bed. I want to hide until something has passed.

The trip to Denver was a great success for the boy and I, but I am not used to being a conduit for every need - physical, emotional, or otherwise - that the boy has. It is exhausting to be a parent, at times. Last night we arrived home late, after the boy's normal bed time. Mom had hidden eggs of all sorts everywhere for the boy to have a late night Easter egg hunt. I stood and smiled for as long as my body would let me. My own bed was calling from far, far away, only a few hundred feet further in a day's traveling, one that ended a week's traveling.


I can not stop seeing that arm lying in the wet pre-dawn mud. The headlights from the car behind it, a bad spotlight on a terrible scene. It all must have happened so fast, so unbelievably fast. Sooner or later it's too late for everything.

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Gradient No More

Our little vacation getaway is coming to its close. A friend texted last night, wanting me to go see Radiohead tonight at Berkeley. It will require coordinating a hand-off of the boy, perhaps something even more. The logistics of bay area living. A part of me wishes only to go home, to be in my own bed as soon as possible. But, there is a Radiohead show at the Greek Theater. 

Drinking is an odd thing, it's fun and I enjoy doing it with my friends, but I am also looking forward to returning home to my regular exercise routine, without drinking. I have not yet grown tired of waking up and feeling good. Drinking drains me of energy in a way that it did not used to, or not quite as much. 

Since today is a day of travel, there will not be much drinking involved, maybe a beer at the airport once we've checked in. I still get travel anxiety after all these years. It is much milder now but still there, lurking, waiting to strike. Beer is medicinal in moderate doses. It is asinine at the quantities that we've been drinking here in Colorado after the boy goes to sleep. 

It is pleasant, though, to sit up and chat with friends, drinking beer after beer after beer. Nice to re-agree or re-disagree on those many apocryphal anecdotes from the past, listening to music, laughing together in the dark. Sometimes they're all we have, these barely agreed upon stories that comprise and contain our shared past. We spend so much time preparing to make memories, amassing stories to place in order behind us, forming the narrative of self from the aggregate of tales. Sometimes I miss the scope and scale of my youthful mistakes. I don't miss making them, so much. I miss them accumulating in such rapid succession, an avalanche of error slowly losing the slope that made itself possible. 

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The Bowling Mole

Kids will pick up anything - lake mud, clumps of algae, dead fish, et al. If adults don't want them picking it up then you can guarantee it'll end up in their hands. I'll forget and go to kiss his hand later and the stench of fresh water death will fill my nose. I try to explain germs, but he has no interest in such things. he finds the stink carcass infinitely more fascinating, not least of all because he knows I don't want him touching it. Oh, to be young.

Yesterday, some friends visited from south of Denver, with kids. We went to a bowling alley, game room, bar. pool hall, restaurant and chatted the day away.

I have infiltrated the adult world. Having kids changes everything. Few can recognize any longer that I am only impersonating an adult, an imposter that gained credentials. Trapped somewhere between picking up dead fish and making smart 401k election choices.

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War Paint

(pic by Rachel)

Fuck, I knew that I'd be drinking here -  it's what friends do - but, it has worn me out. We stayed up late-ish last night. I was a tyrant about playing old 80s tunes until my friends hated me sufficiently to head off to sleep, so I did the same. My son woke next to me with the first hint of the sun's light coming through the east-facing window, demanding our participation in this new day. Kids are a good reason to moderate your behavior, sometimes even exante. 

Today will include a drive south of here to meet up with other old friends and their kids. This trip will be uneventful for our purposes here. Caring for a child while traveling doesn't produce much of interest. Parenting is mundane, like watching someone butter a piece of bread. It is of interest mainly to those who are hungry, little eyes circling the room. 

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Dare of the Hog

We arrived, after nearly a full day of traveling. A hike around a local lake, sunlight working with the Rockies, competing for our attention while they could. The boy went to sleep at his normal hour and my buddies and I stayed up, competing with a case of Dale's Pale Ale for a few hours, listening to hip-hop and soul. 

Old friends, they just don't make them any more. 

The sun wasted no time in its dance around the earth, announcing itself promptly to start our morning. 

Today, a hike up into Chautauqua, then a sushi lunch in Boulder. I'll be back at some point, hopefully with a story to tell. There is much to say about natural beauty, but not after a night of drinking. This morning calls for quietude, coffee, contemplation. 

I almost added expiation to that list, but that would be a lie. We'll be drinking again by this afternoon, though with drinking's latest lessons forgotten, or ignored, or maybe even embraced. 

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Transit, transit - you scratch my mind

(Still life, portrait bokeh, #9)

No more poems, no more paragraphs. 

Today is a travel day - it is merely a two hour drive to the airport, negotiating the distance between the parking garage and the terminal with a wide-eyed child, a modest flight to Denver, the baggage carousel, the claim, the hour or so drive from DEN to Longmont, CO with two old friends. A day of travel is never complete, and often lost. It represents about half of what I still remember from the now fossilized life that I once lived - airports and airplanes. 

I will update you again from the other foot of the Rockies, the more serious and sincere side of the jaggedest stones to ever scrape American skies. 

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in time of daffodils

in time of daffodils (who know

the goal of living is to grow)

forgetting why, remember how

in time of lilacs who proclaim

the aim of waking is to dream,

remember so (forgetting seem)

in time of roses (who amaze

our now and here with paradise)

forgetting if, remember yes

in time of all sweet things beyond

whatever mind may comprehend,

remember seek (forgetting find)

and in a mystery to be

(when time from time shall set us free)

forgetting me, remember me

e.e. cummings

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Denver Bound

Well, I did the triathlon. It was about what I presumed it to be. I liked it, in an unexpected way. I am not a person that would normally participate in that kind of thing. Athletic competition has never spoken to me, and most athletes are annoying. Of course, that is a charged claim, that athletic competition is not my calling, but it is mostly true, a fact that I accept stoically at times, begrudgingly at others. I am arrogant, and taunt people with my intelligence, though I try to be playful about it, and do not relish making others feel bad unless they deserve it, though I don't derive much pleasure from being physically better than anybody else. I suffer the same doubts as everybody else at being worse, so there's very little to win there for me, and an equal amount to lose. 

But I did win, of course. I had the best time for my specific age. Not in my age group, but my listed age, at 49. I'm 48, but they had me documented as being an athletic older gentleman. Nobody at that age did any better, though a 77 year old man was only one minute behind me. So, hold off on the applause. I barely limped past that mobilized sarcophagi as I wheezed my way across the finish line. 

Do you see how I'm not competitive? I could have just said I finished with a modestly presentable time, in the middle of my age group. But, no. I do not kid. 

1:48:05 was my final. It was only a sprint triathlon, but that is a respectable time, I'm told. I thought up a handful of what I believed to be funny observations about the event, but I'm not in the mood for that version of myself right now. 

The younger women's age group was let loose in the water three minutes after the older men, and me, so there was a wave of pink pussy-power heads aiming to overtake me, and many did, a thing I became aware of mostly through doing the backstroke about halfway through the 750 meters. It was almost erotic, in that early dawn fog, seeing all of these straining young female faces bobbing up and down in the water as I impeded their progress. Then, after that first wave of fiercely competitive women were in front of me, all that was left was a mixture of men and women of all ages, and I was still ahead of them. 

The temperature was 37 degrees when we got in the water, same when we got out. The Sun was as useless as Neptune. 

The cycling part was uneventful.

At a few points in the running portion I checked my watch and saw that my heart rate was at 181, which is about 10 bpm higher than what mine should be at my age. The formula is 220 minus your age. So, I stopped and walked a few hundred yards here and there. When I was done, I ate a banana and half of a free bagel, looked around at all the people finishing, then walked to my transition station and collected my stuff and left. Ho hum. 

My buddy that had agreed to do the thing with me was there. At first I thought she had beaten me, but she was just setting out to do the running portion. I would have waited for her, to go to lunch afterwards, anything to shine some light of interest on the rest of the day, but then figured we could have lunch back in Sonoma, where she was sure to go next. We ended up having dinner. 

The young-ish girl next to me was also collecting her stuff. She was mildly angry and packing up dramatically. It was her worst time ever, she insisted. I told her that I set a new world record, that they're flying me to Stockholm to accept my award after the talkshows on both coasts have their shot at me. 

I saw her again in the muddy parking lot across the street as I was leaving, she waved and smiled. She seemed happier after her time had become less of a frustrating fact. Most everybody that I met were conversationally pleasant. Just normal people, pretending to be on the television in their minds. 

I pondered being mad at my time for a bit, to see how it felt, knowing that I didn't really need to walk at all during the running portion, that I could have been a winner, but nothing much came of it. I just accepted that I'm almost 50, and can now say that I have done a triathlon.

I went home and got in bed without a shower. My body was depleted. The rest of the day I could feel a draining loss of energy, as if only my body had smoked pot, a lot of it. My buddy said she felt the same. She was also happy to say that she had done it, though had no interest in doing it again.

Later on, Sunday, the organizers of the thing sent out an email, a discount for next year's event. I responded to the group text of all female triathletes, excepting me, with a screenshot. Nobody seemed interested. It functioned reasonably well as a goal to keep me training through the winter this last season. I thought that maybe I could trick myself into the same next year. 

By yesterday, I was texting a friend in Vegas, trying to get him to do a short triathlon in Tahoe. He has put on a few pounds since his wedding in Mexico almost two years ago now, and I know he loves Tahoe, so I figured... But, no, triathlons are not my thing. I just happen to own a nice bike and that is the main component to them. I own a wetsuit now, also. I'm just trying to amortize my losses. I'll need to talk to my tax guy about how the government can absorb some more of my foolishness this quarter. He's great at that sort of thing. He keeps the hellhounds behind me, barking in the dark. 

The boy and I leave for Denver early Thursday morning. It will be the second big out of town trip that he and I have taken. The first was to LA last year, where his mom will be going for this weekend.  It will be weird for her, her baby boy to be elsewhere. We will check the weather tomorrow, to see if there is any late season snow falling from the heavens for us, at which point I will begin my training for a cross-tundra endurance sled competition. 

While I was finishing writing this an old friend from New York texted, wanting to do the NYC Marathon. It was once our shared ambition, not too terribly many years ago. He'll be coming to San Fran at the end of the month, to visit his father who lives here now. We'll go to a Giants game together and drink beer, laugh along at ourselves. 

What else is there to do at this or any other age. Run?

.

If ever....

If there's ever a price on your head, take it. - Henny Youngman

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Healthy Doubts

(Stay weird, son)

I'm back, a single night of patchy sleep that lasted close to a month. I feel rested and ready. My doping partner, however, called yesterday and offered to bribe me not to do the triathlon tomorrow. Something about bad gambling debts, too big of a spread on the points. She's been sunk heavily into track and field speculations, jabbering about delayed payouts and last minute shifting odds. Cursing everyone except herself. I don't know. Sounds like she has a real problem. She claims to be a libertarian on these issues, a liberal on most all others. We'll see. I offered to lend her my only unlicensed firearm. 

I'll have my team of midgets praying for her, and a few others. They're working in shifts to intercede. It is the very least that I am comfortable with doing. It's up to her and Satan now.

CS sent over a handful of delightful street portraits that he'll never post on his site. I am tempted to post them here, dispel his Batman mystique a bit, but I won't. He has issues to contend with. My intercession in these types of issues is rarely seen as the pure hearted benevolence with which it is intended. 

I have surrounded myself with the problematic literates of the world, though in truth it hardly seemed a choice, at the time. 

Moving on, I re-read a lengthy piece by Hunter S. Thompson yesterday. He takes his style of writing to the nearly illogical extreme here, but has just enough verve of wit to make it all work. It obliquely concerns itself with the confirmation of Clarence Thomas to the US Supreme Court. It's worth reading if for no other reason than to measure the distance between 1992 and now. How the collective sensibilities have changed, and how precisely Thompson catalogued the changes as they were happening.

"They called us Bullies and Mashers, but we were only falling in Love..."

"I hate these bastards, Jann. And I suspect you feel the same.... They might call us bigots, but at least we are Universal bigots. Right? Shit on those people. Everybody you see these days might have the power to get you locked up.... Who knows why? They will have reasons straight out of some horrible Kafka story, but in the end it won't matter any more than a full moon behind clouds. Fuck them."

Yes, he was my kind of liberal. He suffered a lot of criticism, and would have been eaten alive by the self-proclaimed liberals of this day, but the world needs more of his kind, and always has. What the world does not seem to need any more of are contemporary critics. They have outnumbered themselves, to no positive gain. Just listen to what they say, you'll find that it is mostly nonsensical ideological bullshit. Then, go back and read what Thompson wrote about the present, past, and future. He was further left and more correct than any of them. His socio-political predictions are astounding in their accuracy. He recognized the dangers of any political consensus, never took either side's victories for granted, nor assumed that they would be used in the spirit in which they were won.

I suspect that he also would have predicted Trump's win, even as he may have hoped for a temporary Hillary, anything, at least until we all had more time to hide, or pretend to pray.

If nothing else, his style of subversive irreverence will go back into hiding, to save itself. Everything of value to me needs to go underground again, and there are plenty fighting that, but they'll lose and in ten years they'll claim it's what they wanted anyway. The immediate future does not look so good for the free spirits. There are many more that wish the world to be a public torture chamber for the weird.

Fuck them, is right.

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Whenever Possible

(Eles y Rhys)

My friends visiting from Costa Rica returned home early yesterday morning. It rained all day, will rain all day again today. I awoke around 2:30am and have been telling myself that maybe I'll go back to sleep ever since. I gave up, the coffee is brewing. You should be able to tell when it grips me here in a handful of sentences. I will fire off one about Trump, that's how you'll know. When old liberals get excited they'll sometimes just spit curses at a computer screen. It's what they do now. 

I'm not sure what being a liberal even means any more. I've watched the Pepsi commercial and I still don't get it. How much more pro-Coke can America be. I can see why everybody is so fucking pissed off about the ad, though. Like many others I had truly believed that soda would once and for all solve America's many problems. It's always worked for me. In fact, I'm so confident in soda's healing power I'm prepared to send Kendall Jenner to Syria to help work things out. Her courage is what's needed now, more than ever. She really knows how to leverage, that Kendall. 

Having visitors was great - lots of cooking dinners around the house, playing with the boy, encouraging him to be five years old and not a month more, little adventures, a visit here and a visit there, some nice music, lots of chatting and laughter around the kitchen. A nice twenty year friendship from which to view and assess the world. That's what is needed most in trying times, old friends. I'm ready to open my apartment up to be a b-n-b of sorts. Only those without opinions can visit, of course, though they must be prepared to teach me how to cook, and they must get along well with kids. Or, at least one kid.

I made lasagna for the first time ever, which came out wonderfully (with a little help). So, now I have yet another dish under my belt, though just barely. It won't stay under my belt for long. I only went for a small handful of short bike rides while my buddies were here. The triathlon is on Sunday. I am praying to the Dakota Access Gods that it gets rained out, or that the dam in Northern California finally bursts. Anything. I don't really want to do a triathlon. I just needed a physical goal to get me through the winter. Now, we're here in spring and I've lost interest in spending a single 'nother dollar on this stupid shit. The wetsuit was $200. The "Tri" shorts were $60, etc. I lost my goggles and head condom.

I'll use all of this stuff exactly once. Sunday, maybe.

The world seems full of people who have no qualms throwing away all of their money like this. They seem to be competitive about it. The ones who have developed a brand in this market must really be something. You take $4 worth of fabric and wave some whiteness over it and voil-fucking-à... you've just made capitalist magic, which just so happens to be the color of money.

So, having only slept a small handful of hours last night was not what I needed. My neck hurts and is stiff, my legs feel fatigued. Everybody is giving me advice for Sunday. It's like having a newborn again. If you want to see how much the world is packed to the rim with unsolicited advice then have a child or announce that you're doing a triathlon. Suddenly everybody's Dr. Spock at the Olympics. It's as if they have all forgotten that I know how to read. Who knows, maybe I have. I haven't tried in a while. I hear it's like riding a bike, but with a book between your legs.

I don't like waking up and feeling as if I need to take two aspirin. I mean, through no fault of my own. I should call in sick to work today. I think a stiff neck qualifies, though I do not have the most physically taxing of jobs. The most difficult thing that I do most days is stand up out of the chair that I've been sitting in to keep my ass from going to sleep.

Well, not true, I suppose that driving into the office is the toughest part. I've grown to enjoy going into the city quite a bit, though I have not been in for a few weeks now. Circumstances have prevented me. Imagine having a job that you can claim circumstantial reasons for not appearing.

That's me.

Though that's not accurate, either. My presence is not required, and some have suggested it as being even less than preferable. I can be a distracting influence, like when I talk, which is often. It's why I work in a locked box far away from others. I, of course, kid. I'm a friendly guy, and have grown to like the people that I work with quite a bit. They have learned to either tolerate or ignore me, some have even reached through the bars to pet my head and feed me squirrels.

That should be everybody's policy - tolerate or ignore, whenever possible - it does work. I mean, it won't solve society's problems the way that Pepsi can, of course, but I'm convinced that the worst attributes of most people are what draw them to the same in others, and now we have a system designed to capitalize on those horrible human interactions. What could possibly go wrong. It's the whenever possible part that seems to trip most people up.

Do you remember when people openly discussed the nearly unimaginable improvements that society would enjoy once information flowed freely from one to another, to all others. Nope. That will be recorded as among the worst things that could have possibly happened. The lines between information and ignorance have been erased. Now there is only opinion and informed opinion, everybody gets to claim either. In my lifetime I have never felt so existentially trapped by a mob. I mean, sure, they can be avoided to some degree, through the use of precise language, but their memes are out there waiting to get you. Anybody can meme whatever.

If the boy wasn't sleeping then I'd put on Babylon By Bus right now and push the faders up, maybe pop a couple more aspirin, then just sit back and sip my soda, teach the world to sing, or some other such saccharine sentiment. It wasn't Marley's best album, in fact it's among his worst, which is still quite a bit better than most.


Everybody is full of ignorance, yet they don't know how to ignore; they proclaim tolerance, except for that which is of course intolerable. The world has never before been so burdened by the newly acquired wisdom of the masses. There were Gutenberg hurdles which have since been obliterated.

I'm going to go jump into a cold lake with a bunch of white people, see if that helps anything. I swear the lake is the color of morning Pepsi. 

Their official statement claims, "We also apologize for putting Kendall Jenner in this position." I must assume they meant the denim outfit, which, if nothing else should have brought the Canadians some sense of satisfaction and vindication.

One day I too hope to apologize for putting Kendall Jenner in a position, like maybe a full nelson or a figure four. I want only to advance the cause of intra-gender wrestling. That, dear friends, will hopefully be my legacy and gift to a troubled world. Close your eyes now and picture me gently pinning Kendall to the mat over and over and over again, for peace and harmony. I want the world to know what unity smells like. She and I could one day shoot a short film in which I also abandon my modeling career to help foster a global denim sense of peace and togetherness, maybe for Lockheed Martin or one of their competitors.

Shhhh, just learn to tolerate or ignore.

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"Daddy looks like a woman!"

This was my son's loudly proclaimed public response to my putting on a wetsuit. I found it to be quite funny, but tried not to encourage him too much, not in front of witnesses, anyway. 

So, I too have suffered from gender normative pressures. I have not had the most diverse experiences with gender, or not as much as some of my friends have. Until my five year old son tried to convince everybody that I had a neoprene vagina I would not have considered myself a victim in the gender battles. I closed my eyes and tried to get an erection to shut him up, but no luck. Janet Jackson does not do for me what she once did, I guess.

It did occur to me that maybe I shouldn't travel to North Carolina. They'd make me prove that I had a butthole before letting me use the bathroom. Or, did they do away with that law yet? 

One world, one love... but binary buttholes. 

I wish I had a picture of myself in the wetsuit, so that you could judge for yourselves, but you'll have to take my son's word for it until then: I look like a woman. I wonder how long it'll take for them to cut my pay. 

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