From Maddy 10th Bi…

Our daughter has turned 10.  She got a pink guitar, and has already learned two chords, and written about a dozen songs based on these two chords.  How did this all happen, and how did it hapen so fast?

We had our annual family trip to the Addison Oaks County Park, and it was fun, if by “fun” you mean “eventful” and if by “eventful” you mean that my poor 8-year old niece fell off a bike and scraped her face and broke her arm, and her Dad got posion ivy, and her girlfriend coldn’t sleep all night with bad allergies, and I broke my toe running away from a racoon.  Yes, I think “eventful” pretty much describes it.  There are more terrifying pictures here.

2008 Pleasant Ridge Synchronized Swimming show was last night.  Take that, Olympics!

When we were at Old Orchard Beach in Maine, my daughter wanted to borrow our digital camera and take a video of the ocean, I said sure, knock yourself out.  But as she took the video, I started to worry about the amount of memory left on the camera, and kept going “OK, that’s enough!”  Of course, lo and behold, when we get home and i download the video to my PC, darned if it isn’t the most beautiful, relaxing, zen-like appreciation of the mighty rolling ocean I have ever seen.  So here it is, uploaded to YouTube for your benefit.  As a bonus, it also includes my obnoxious Dad commentary.

1. Daddy loves you.
2. Could you please lower your voice?  You’re being kind of loud.
3. You are so smart, you can be anything you want to be.
4. I asked you before–lower your voice!
5. Great job!
6. I don’t care if your brother hit you, that is no excuse to hit him back.
7. Zip your lips.  Zip it.  Zip!  It!
8. That’s it.  No TV.  No Computer.  No Anything.  Go to your room–now!  I mean it–GO!  Yes, I am talking to you, and I want you in your room this instant. Not the stairs.  Not the bathroom.  Your room.  IN Your room.  Not near your room-IN IT!  NOW!!  If you value your life, you’ll go NOOOOOWWWW!!
9. As God is my witness, if you don’t lower yor voice, you will not live to see another day.
10. Good night Sweetie.  Daddy loves you.

Since I spend a lot of time at the pool in the Summer, I had received a few comments from my family regarding a mole on my back that “looked weird”, so I went to the Doc to ask him what he thought.  Turns out there’s no problem, but he did give me these valuable mole tips that will perhaps benefit you some day.  And they are as simple as “A, B, C, D”:

• A:  Is the mole assymetrical?
• B: Are their boundaries (eg, is it distinct from your regular luscious skin)?
• C: Is the mole the same color all the way across?
• D: Is the diameter no larger than a pencil eraser?

If your answer to all (4) of these questions is “Yes”, then go go back to the pool.  If not…well–it was nice knowing you!

As a middle-aged Dad worried about his job, the economy, the dwindling value of his 401K, and paying for his kid’s college tuition, there’s nothing that concerns to me more than the upcoming Zombie Plague that threatens to destroy all mankind.  Which is why WORLD WAR Z, An Oral History of the Zombie War, is such a valuable resource.  You get to hear testimonies from everyone involved, in the U.S., Tel Aviv, China, India, Khazikstan.  You learn about the initial denial that anyone was infected,  and Israel’s controversial decision to wall the city in to protect its inhabitants.  This is basically a book about denial, about not wanting to face facts, about summoning the personal and political will to do what has to be done.  There is heroism, there is abundant stupidity, there is best of human nature and the worst.  Is it actually quite an intresting and thought-provoking book, especially given that we lost 3/4 of the world’s population during the 15-year zombie war.

Also, I did not know that zombies could walk the ocean floor.

4 Stars.  I would especially recommend the audio version of this book.

When I was a wee lad majoring in English, we had three “Great Books” classes we were required to take.  These were books chosen by scholars as being the most representative, over time, of literature during that particular time period.  We read Beowulf (without Angelina Jolie), we read Jane Austen, we read William Blake’s SONGS OF INNOCENCE OF EXPERIENCE, we read Charles Dickens (which, I am ashamed to say, I kind of skimmed), and stuff like that.  And while a lot of these books were interesting, and worthy of discussion and writing papers about, I would be hard pressed to call them “great books”.

Meaning, while I enjoyed them, and would probably point them out to others as representative of the “great” literature, I didn’t they were great books in the way I just finished BEL CANTO by Ann Patchett and cried and cried and told my wife “This was a great book.  It’s one of the top 10 books I’ve ever read” is great. (Note: other Top 10 Brad books:  DUANE’S DEPRESSED by Larry McMurtry, A SON OF THE CIRCUS by John Irving,  A HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE by Gabriel Garcia Marquez).  Because while “great” books are usually great for a reason (they crystalize the thoughts of an era, they deal with classic themes, etc.), I will say almost none of those kinds of “great” books really connected with me emotionally.

Not that every book has to make you sob little a little girly man.  I love foreign detective novels, and Haruku Murakami novels, David Foster Wallace intellectual-thons, and they are full of interesting insights into life and the human condition and the nature of the Universe, and they make you think, and that’s “great.”  But these other books I think are so great, to me, do something for me that is a rare and beautiful thing:  they give you profound insight into the mysteries of the human condition.

I also just finished Dennis Lehane’s SHUTTER ISLAND, which is about a Federal Marshall trying to find an escaped mental patient on an island prison for the criminally insane.  That was great, too.  I guess it all depends on the issues that are important to you.  After all, some people think those Oprah books are “great”.  Which is, I guess, why we have classically “great” books - something everyone can agree on, though perhaps not as moving and personally meaningful to you as something that hits your personal buttons.

Anyway, Brad recommends these two “great”-ish books.  As Dr. Steve Brule says:  “Check it out!”

Some people asked me why I haven’t been posting to the blog lately.  Did I mention…it’s Summer!