avery – Page 39 – Adrian Taverner

blue sky & smiles

It’s a great day in America, ladies and gentlemen. (Is Craig Ferguson still on? Does he still do that?) The good guys won the election, and today you could definitively tell that Avery does try to carry a conversation. She’ll even yarp at you if you aren’t paying enough attention to her. This at 7.5 weeks old. The next couple decades should be a real hoot. I jest. She’s utterly charming. We managed to hang out a lot today, just hanging. Chatting. It was awesome. Also, she loves being an airplane. I can tell because the airplane drools.

What if she’s talking before she can even reliably find her hands? That would be weird, right? Unusual? She’s very smart. No pressure on us, right? To keep her entertained? Stimulated? Challenged? Yikes.

I’ll wait a bit before calling Mensa.

It snowed yesterday! A nor’easter, whatever that is. Today was sparkling crisp blue skies with an inch or two of snow on the ground. We took Avery for her second subway ride ever, into town this time. We saw some snowmen, some snowangels, some kids having a snowball fight. She slept through it. Maybe it won’t be so hard to keep her entertained.

That might do it. Thank you, Thomas, for being our very own lolcat.

I saw a comment on FB that gave me pause. I hadn’t thought about it before. It said, “Please be respectful of our veterans and don’t put up Christmas decorations until November 12th.” They don’t have Remembrance Day down here in the US – they have Veterans Day (also November 11), which seems to be mostly furniture sales; and they have Memorial Day in May, which is mostly barbecues, fireworks and more furniture sales. Remembrance Day in Canada, depending where you are (and what age you are), can be a vaguely understood minute of silence at 11:11am, or a full day of solemn acknowledgement of the horrors of war and honoring those that died in them. I was somewhere in my high school years before I had some sense of what that meant. There’s this urge to glorify soldiering, which is what landed us in World War I, and continues to send testosterone-fueled boys off to get themselves killed at the direction of politicians who may never have held a gun. The point of Remembrance Day, in the words of those that decreed the day in the first place, is lest we forget, and it’s not the glory we’re supposed to remember, I can tell you that. For me, it’s not even about some notion of noble sacrifice, though there are countless stories of that. Lest we forget is a solemn vow, for me, to remember the desperate wrongness of taking human life. Honoring those that sacrificed is right and appropriate, yes, but that’s only half of it. It doesn’t go far enough. The hope is that our leaders will grasp at every last straw before resorting to war. If everyone could manage to take ego out of the equation… really, how much more war would there be?

So I promise not to put up decorations until after November 11, this year and every year. Seeing as that’s still seven weeks of silly season, that’s not too big a sacrifice. Not by comparison, right?

If you know any veterans, thank them. So many of them have been through hell. If you know anyone thinking about signing up for the military, ask them why. Defending your country or fighting for the rights of others is a lot different from kicking some camel jockey ass. The sort of person that thinks that way would do his country the greatest service by not having children.

Heavy.

I wonder if I get into the heavy topics here because I spend the day writing comedy and trying to make my daughter laugh…

Hey, let me ask you this – do you read all the words, or do you just check out the pics and tl;dr?

Sleep well, dear reader. I hope your tomorrow is pretty great. I’ma get x-rayed to see if I have a broken chest.

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The Prez: The Sequel

avery, critical thinking, sup

Ordinarily, this is where you would see a pic of my adorable daughter. Tonight, however, we saw a frighteningly close race for the office of the President of the United States. So there’s a collective sigh of relief. And no pic. She was dependably adorable today, but I’ve been distracted. Now that it’s a lock, I’m watching Fox News. They don’t even try to be impartial over there, do they. That is a room full of defeat. And the reams of excuses! Shouldn’t there be a law forcing them to call it news entertainment, like the Daily Show and Colbert? Wait – that’s a grossly unfair comparison. Jon and Stephen use facts for comedy. Fox passes comedy off as fact.

The popular vote is uncomfortably close. What this says to me is that the general populace is frustrated at what they perceive as a lack of momentum in economic recovery. That says to me not enough people are aware of where that inertia is coming from. Punching right through the fog, you realize that right there is why the Republican party still exists at all. It’s a rich boys club devoted to staying that way, and enough people are out there willing to believe in things like trickle down theory and voting the same way daddy did.

I mean, I get it, not everybody believes that a nation should provide for its people, or that if everybody invests in everybody, everybody gets more. Some people really do believe that the best way is every man for himself, and if I get crushed, well, I wasn’t trying hard enough. I firmly believe, and always will, that thinking that way is pathetically short-sighted. Doomed to failure in the face of deeper thinking and farther reaching strategy. Here’s a confusing illustration: if you can get to the top just by keeping everybody else down, then you never have to be any better than just better than them. You are intensely vulnerable to someone from an environment where everybody worked together to raise the bar overall. You can be certain that his qualifications will exceed yours, because he had to work harder to rise above his competition. A society where only the chosen few can succeed, and do so at the expense of the majority, can’t hope to compete with a society that promotes a stronger collective.

So the insidious part, of which the old suits of the Republican party are perfectly aware, is that they no longer need to climb the backs of lesser men. Business has grown past borders. The American middle class is irrelevant to the American elite. The nation’s economy might depend on middle class spending, but the profits of the corporations owned by the 1% do not depend on the nation’s economy. All they need the middle class for now is electing favorable politicians, so that nobody fucks with the laws that keep them rich.

But wait, you argue, if the middle class isn’t spending money, the corporations will have no profits. Yeah, duh, I know. This is my entire point.

So how do you keep the middle class spending money? It’s not by giving them tax breaks. Both Dems and the GOP keep screwing that up. That’s just election bait. You keep them spending money by creating an environment of stability and security. People spend more when they know there’s more coming. Simple fact. So tax them fairly, tax everyone fairly. And use that money to create stable infrastructure. Universal health care. The highest standards of public education. Social programs that promote ability. Free post secondary education.

Man, read those words again. You just know that that place, wherever it is, is a happy place where people spend money. Low crime and a very healthy economy. And lots of extremely competitive professionals, globally speaking.

Or you can deregulate the financial sector, promote cronyism, and reward backstabbing. High crime, prisons beyond capacity with the poor and uneducated, a ludicrously top-heavy economy, and a public education system that barely passes muster as a babysitting program. Never mind the military spending that could, in one year, put every child in the country through school from kindergarten through a doctorate of their choice.

Anyway, rant rant. I can accept conservatism insofar as it keeps liberals from spending too freely. Money should not be burned. That said, I cannot accept the majority of what seems to me a political stance with woefully short-sighted thinking. That, of course, only has legs if you believe in your country. If you don’t care what happens to your country, then by all means, vote to slash public programs and close schools. Make teaching a minimum wage job.

Oh dear, I am going on at length. And it’s not like I’m going to change the mind of any conservative who happens to be reading this. Like any conservatives read this. So moving on! Four more years! Let’s see some Change! Optimism Prime!

In other news much closer to the heart, while I was playing with Little Peppermint today, she grabbed my fingers and looked right at her tiny fist. Twice! Cause and effect! Connected dots! Geeenyus! Then the moment passed and she forgot she had hands. But it was a fantastic moment. Twice! She’s very smart. And only seven weeks old. She’ll be transcribing Greek literature by Christmas.

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vote karmically

avery, photopost, sup

Adorable Outtake #1.

Because she’s gorgeous like that. TYVM.

WELL! Here we are. Election Eve. I reside in a country in which I have no vote. Kind of like women not so long ago. Or anyone else who couldn’t own property. Though I guess I am welcome to own property. Bad comparison. Just the women, then. Right. Anyway, at least I get to pay taxes. Sigh. Nate Silver says the election is a done deal, and that’s comforting. But I hope Democrat and so-called undecided voters remain blissfully unaware of his confidence, because they are notorious for not bothering to show up if they think their vote doesn’t matter. Hence the Bush years. For the love of all that is holy, people, if you appreciate what your country represents, get your ass out of bed and vote. It matters. Insert passionate line about civic responsibility here. And yes, I promise to submit my absentee ballot for the next Canadian election. May you non-confrontational ambivalents please make that happen before 2015. Your country and environment can only take so much, whatever you might like to think.

So if Nate’s stats analysis proves correct, as it has for the last half dozen years or so, we can look forward to another four years of… what? Republican stonewalling? I’m hoping that, relieved of the need to spend the latter half of his term campaigning for re-election, Obama will be able to drop the hammer with a little more authority, and get some work done.

Anywhoo. I’ll watch Stewart and Colbert’s live coverage of the election tomorrow night to see how it goes. Or went. And then we’ll all wake up Wednesday in a brave new world. Of more politics and partisan bullshit. Boo.

Moving on. An old acquaintance is in town for his 40th birthday. He’s a good mate of Lee’s from the Victoria days, and I know him through various angles of the Vic bar scene. We used to call him The Kid. Now most people call him Jason. Weird. Probably less confusing overall, since he has a girl who’s about to turn 9. Man, it’s been a long time. It was excellent to hang out with him this evening and, crazy as it sounds, get to know him better. He’s a good man with a boatload of stories. Reminds me of somebody that way. I’m looking forward to hanging some more while he’s here. So strange how that relatively brief period of my life spent in Victoria has been so impactful, so far reaching. I would say to you, dear reader, that you would do yourself a great service to try to be present in every moment, because you never can tell which of those moments will pay dividends a thousand times over later in life. Also, don’t be a dick to people (see first point).

Thing poking my brain – remember those Italian honeymoon pics? Haven’t touched them since. Bought printer ink though, so that’s something.

Thing poking my brain – did not return that call yet. The one possibly from the guy who hit me with a truck. I’m thinking I will:

Thing poking my brain – get an x-ray. Ibuprofen is working like a charm, but I can’t stay on that indefinitely, so it’s maybe time to find out what my insides look like. Then, informed and with a clear conscience, I can:

Think poking my brain – return that call. So his conscience can also be clear. I’ll see if my chiropractor can refer me. Closest thing I have to a doctor.

Man, karma can be a lot of work. Like, imagine what horrors will be visited upon you if you haven’t been doling out the requisite hugs whenever you read my blog. I shudder at the thought. Tell you what, I’m going to bed now, and we’ll call it even if you go forth and, in the next 24 hours, find just one person to hug that you haven’t hugged before. And if they ask why you hugged them, don’t tell them it was because they looked like they needed it. Tell them it was because they looked like they were worth it. There’s a difference.

Hugs. There’s your answer. Take care of each other. Vote karmically.

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