Your Looks are Laughable, Unphotographable...

Happy belated Valentine's Day to all. I am glad you all avoided being beaten by clubs and then beheaded, which is what happened to the original St. Valentine when he messed with Emperor Claudius the Cruel and the Roman Empire. There is some confusion over what exactly Valentine did to earn his wrath, although it was almost certainly just refusing to deny Christianity and not, as commonly repeated nowadays, the marrying of Christian couples during a Roman ban on all marriage. His big miracles (every Saint has to have one) were restoring sight and hearing to his jailer's daughter before his execution.

If the marriage thing is hooey, why the love connection? One legend is that the Christians were looking for a day to replace the Roman holiday of Lupercalia (Feb 15), an ancient fertility festival. However, no mention of a love or romance are connected to St. Valentine's day until the 14th century when Rome and its festivals had long crumbled into dust. It seems more likely that its romantic connections started with Geoffrey Chaucer who in 1382 wrote:

For this was on seynt Volantynys day
Whan euery bryd comyth there to chese his make [mate].

If you can parse the olde English, Chaucer was claiming that every bird chooses its mate on Valentine's day, a concept which
became common lore (birds choose their mates in mid-February). Whether or not Chaucer was himself personally responsible for starting all this silliness, it certainly makes sense that the idea came to being in this time period when the concept of romantic love was first truly developed (sorry, Antony and Cleopatra).

Modern Valentine's day was developed in the 19th century by, you guessed it, the stationary industry. This fledgling industry soon rapidly grew into the modern gift card/Hallmark monstrosity that it is today. Before that people just exchanged pleasantries that did not have a funny picture or saccharine sentiment on the cover.



To belabor the obvious, today's pics are Valentine's day related. Up top is me early morning on the 14th wearing my We Heart Daddy T-shirt and uncombed hair. I know it can be difficult to distinguish between my combed and uncombed hair sometimes, but you will have to take my word for it. Next is an adorable Rylie in a swing with her new soft, bunny rattle. These bunny rattles (we also have a matching yellowish one) are really the very first things the girls started grabbing and shaking. Now they grab all sorts of things. I hope to have some incriminating footage of Kayla and her stuffed monkey up soon. She does unspeakable things to that monkey.

OK, not unspeakable. She grabs it, hugs it and puts it in her mouth. It just looks bad.

Finally we have Candy and her two honorary Palentines (Tm) wearing Valentine's Day outfits my mom got for them. One thing has become increasing apparent to me this month. One, Black History really needs more gift cards and maybe a poem by Chaucer and Two, Valentine's Day is a huge day for the womenfolk... and my house has an increasingly heavy mix of womenfolk. Combined with my (on a good day) apathy for the holiday and there could be a future massacre in the works. Or at least a beheading.

Damn you Esther Howland!

What, do I have to do all your research for you? Google it yourself.

Two Things At Once






Howdy folks. Sorry for the long break, but I did warn you. I have gotten past the most intense time of the year, job-wise, with sanity and babies generally intact. Woohoo! Today I bring you two babies in a play gym. This will be followed by a rant. Feel free to skip it, but then you might not learn something today...

The play gym is a Baby Einstein product given to us by the fine Deacon household. Let us hear a shout out. The Baby Einstein business plan is to take shakey child development theory, extrapolate it far beyond even that weak scientific foundation, market a product based on this wild extrapolation as a tool that will make your child smarter and more well-adjusted, and then charge too much for it. The real Baby Einstein is the CEO who every night rolls around in a bed covered in money that has been dredged directly from the dreams of well meaning parents.

As of 2001 the company was purchased by Disney, making its evil nature official. That all being said, I am sure I will continue to buy their products, because hey, I want a genius baby as much as the next guy.


The Gym, as you can see is basically a colorful, padded mat with criss-crossing bars that go overhead. The bars come with handy places from which one can hang roughly one zillion things, reducing the baby to complete sensory overload. These items include rattles, mirrors, animal pictures with text (both photos and cartoon representations), squeaking birds, and the centerpiece of the whole aparatus: A star that plays music and lights up the tips of its star in rhythm with the music. I can't quite place the tune, but it is not a lullaby. Imagine high energy gypsy music. The philosphy is clearly the more stimulus the smarter your baby will be. Next I am going to get one of those freak-out chairs from Clockwork Orange (or LOST) and pin their eyes open.

In practice it is a nice alternative to the Mobile for something to engage their attention and reduce parental strain. As they get older the two of them will probaby interact with it more and it will go from Baby TV (passive) to full-fledged interactive toy (Baby XBOX). Also note they hold hands in most of these pictures. That is some cute-ass stuff, right there.

The weak connecting thread of this blog is the question of whether the typical person can hold two ideas in their head at once. Up top is a toy based largely on information overload. Does that prepare us for the world, or simply begin the bombardment at a younger age. A common symptom of info-overload is the inability to absorb useful information at all. Like the explorer who tries to hold too many items (lantern, mail, a grue) , he may just end up dropping them all.

Case in point and my present pet peeve: Global Warming and Ozone Depletion. Despite what appears to be the majority public opinion, these are not the same issue. There are TWO significant things human activity is doing to our atmosphere. Sadly, the average American seems unable to keep the two ideas in their head at the same time. Partly this is because they never really understand the problem, and partly because of info-overload. The details (like there are two separate atmosphere problems) get lost along the way.

Quick Primer:

The Ozone Layer is a section of triply connected oxygen (normal oxygen is doubly bonded) that lies roughly at the top of our atmosphere. It is valuable because it absorbs

a large percentage of the harmful ultraviolet rays that hit the Earth from the Sun. Without the ozone you would sunburn in a fraction of the time you presently do. Certain chemicals we make, most famously chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), float up to the top of the atmosphere and destroy ozone. One rascally CFC molecule can break apart a huge number of ozone molecules, making them doubly pernicious. Huge holes in the ozone have opened up over the poles (north and south), which scientists believe are related to this release of CFCs. CFCs are being phased out in the United States, but are still wildly used around the world as a cheap way to run air conditioners and produce foam products (like a seat cushion). At one time they were used as propellant in aerosol cans, which is the image a lot of people connect to it... and to global warming for some perverse reason.

Global Warming is the steady increase in the average temperature around the world because more and more greenhouse gases are being sent into the atmosphere. This occurs for basically for the same reason your car warms up hotter than the air around it on a sunny day. Light comes in through the window (atmosphere) gets absorbed by the seat (ground) and then is re-emitted as infrared heat which can't escape the window (atmosphere). Carbon dioxide is called a greenhouse gas because it does not let the infrared heat out, warming the planet. There are many ways to make CO2, but the easiest is to burn something. Like oil. Or natural gas. Or trees.
Burning trees is a double whammy, as it also destroys plants that take CO2 out of the air. By the way, freakishly cold winter days are not evidence against global warming. Increases in temperature cause increases in volatility. That is a fancy term saying things will go up and down more. So while the average day gets hotter, you will actual have more freakish days -- both super hot and super cold.

There is a bit of confusion because CFCs are also greenhouse gases (they absorb heat), but they make up a tiny percentage of the problem compared to CO2.

What has set me off is an article in the New York Times. The original article title was: "As Asia Keeps Cool, Scientists Worry About Global Warming". It was about the huge rise in the use of air conditioning in India and China, which all use CFCs because they are so much cheaper. So the clever title was misleading. In fact, if you read the article is makes no mention of global warming at all. At some point someone besides me must have thrown a brick at the Science Editors head, because now the title says they "...Worry About The Ozone Layer". Not as clever, but not as misleading. And this was the N.Y. Times. Supposedly some of the best print journalists around.

Now before anyone has a conniption, yes, air conditioning tends to be one of the largest power hogs around. Power takes electricity. Electricity is more often than not generated by burning things. So it is an issue for Global Warming as well, but the article was about the ozone issue. A DIFFERENT issue.

But modern mankind can't seem to keep two ideas in its head.

My Preshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhious...



These are the sort of dangerous photographs a child risks when their father is a big ole geek. I plan on putting these into the "Oh, you are dating my daughter? Wait a moment, I have something to show you" slide show, along with diaper changes, bath time photos, and potty training.

For those of you who are not intimately familiar with Tolkien, the text on the front of the onesy is a play on the poem from the Lord of the Rings... which I believe may have been made into a movie. I will have to check into that. Anyway, the original text is:

Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

Begin at "One Ring to rule them all" and swap the word Twin for Ring, and you have what is written on Rylie. It is, in fact, a lot of words so the text has to scroll all the way around to the "back section".



The fellow she is having a staring contest with is of course, Gollum, the poor tortured soul who was once a simple fellow named Smeagle, until possession of the One Ring for centuries twisted him into the misbegotten creature you now see before you. And then, of course, he was made into a collectible porcelain figurine. There is no end to his indignities.

Why are they both sitting on a sleeping pad with cute, western-themed decoration, like cowboys and wild desert flowers? Because that is what Sauron was into. Seriously, Barad-dur was covered in horseshoes, ten gallon hats, and saddle-shaped reading lamps. The original War of the Ring was fought over whether or not Isildur would take back what he said about John Wayne actually having a girl's name. Could not find a bigger Country Western fan. Or malevolent force for evil. It is sad Tolkien concentrated so much on the latter and not so much on the former. I mean, each Nazgul had a personalized bullwhip signed by Gene Autry. No one ever writes about that...



Well that is it. Five blogs in five days. I have blown completely through all my pictures and have nothing of any interest (or even mild disinterest) left to talk about. The next two weeks are going to be proposal madness, so I may slack off a bit. Keep on checking, but if you need time to catch up on your reading of Daily Kos or Penny Arcade, this could be the time.

S.

That's Show Biz...



The little woman is a member of the local Mothers of Multiples club. This joins her other memberships, like being a charter member of Women in Animation, an ASIFA member (another animation society which vote for the coveted "Annie" awards), KCRW, and World's Greatest Mom (her mug award is still forth-coming). The MoM club has a web site bulletin board where you can find out about nannies, free baby stuff, etc. Occasionally it will post requests from casting agencies that are looking for twins.

If you are not in "the know", Hollywood desperately needs multiples to cast all their baby and child parts, because the laws concerning child actors are so strict. For babies under 6 months they are so restrictive it is hard to see how any baby ever shows up on camera. Seriously, I think a baby is allowed to be under the lights for 20 minutes a day. Total. There are also restrictions on total time, including travel to and from the shoot on the order of a couple of hours. A total nightmare if you have ever seen film-making in action, which is often barely controlled chaos. Imagine spending all day setting up a shot, paying all your actors and crew members, only for some sort of fifteen minute delay to scrap your whole day... UNLESS you have a second baby that looks almost exactly like the first. The most famous example of acting twins nowadays would be the Olson twins of Full House fame. They are in fact fraternal twins (not identical). They just look a lot alike.

So back to our message board. A couple of months ago we had seen an ad for the Sopranos. We were real bummed, because our children would have had a chance to be involved in a whacking, but the filming for that is all out in New York so we couldn't apply. Then a few weeks ago, another ad came up. Someone needed newborn twins for a Suave commercial. Not actual newborns, as you do not want to know how hard it is to shoot babies under a month (I think they require a full medical team and a written afidavit from the Governor), but young babies. Our girls seemed perfect, so Candy said what the hell and sent in a photo, which I believe is the one topping this entry (or one so close it doesn't matter).



We got a response the very next day. They told us, and I kid you not, that sorry, they were looking for someone a little younger. They might have been interested, but they also weighed too much. Man, Hollywood is absolutely brutal. There is a saying that you can never be too young or too thin. Apparently this still holds at 3 months and 9 pounds.

So our dreams of being abusive Hollywood parents who exploit our own children for wealth and vicarious fame are temporarily smashed. Did you know you can take as much of 85% of your children's income? Rules require 15% be saved in trust for the child actor so they are not completely screwed, but the rest is under control of the Guardian. Poor Gary Coleman.

The final two pictures are just about as saccharine sweet as can possibly be imagined. How can you say these faces don't belong in the pictures?

Miss Rylie and Kayla, you used to be big!

We are big. It was the shampoo commercials that got small.