Evolving Pains

Poor old Mr. Darwin has been the target of attacks from religious zealots for a century and a half now, when all he did was come up with a rational explanation for how all the complex life forms on the Earth came to be. While his original theories had some holes, the basic tenets have in fact been proven time and time again. Scientists watch things evolve all the time. But if you want to argue whether there is enough evidence to truly demonstrate evolution is and has been working on things as complex as man, go right ahead. I disagree, but skepticism is the core of good science so doubt away.

What drives me ape-shit crazy is the Creationists and backers of Intelligent Design attacking evolution, Darwin, and scientists using a logic system that is truly cringe worthy. The theory of evolution is not anti-religion or anti-faith. It provides a rational framework that one could easily believe a benevolent deity would put in place to bring about mankind. Just because something is not in the Bible does not mean it doesn't exist. Penguins are not tricks of the devil either.

Similarly, creationism is not "the other side" of the issue. One is a scientific theory demonstrable through experiment and one is philosophy/religion, revealed to us by God and requiring Faith. You do not teach them side-by-side as competing theories. Might as well complain geology is being taught without a proper mention of mythological volcano Gods. I am not saying this to demean the beliefs of creationists, but to select an example that shows how apples and oranges the two things are. You can't have a scientific argument that goes: You say lava is molten rock heated by the mantle of the Earth, but that cannot be because Vulcan would not intrude into the domain of Pluto, Lord of the Underworld. Both are accurate statements, but setting them counter to one another makes no sense. Knowing about Vulcan and the Greek/Roman pantheon is enriching, but it will not in any way help with the predictions of volcanic eruptions.

So what started me on this mini-rant? This YouTube video from the teen actor Kirk Cameron, famous for his stint on the sitcom "Growing Pains" in the 80s and fervent evangelism. To summarize for those unable or unwilling to watch the video, the big idea is to counter-attack all the media hoopla over 150 years of Origins of the Species by printing their own version of it, complete with a 50 page introduction giving the creationist argument. They will give the book away for free, bing bang boom, everyone will start attending a mega-church.



Because I am a glutton for punishment, I leafed through the introduction to the special Origin of the Species book, available here. Sit back, maybe get yourself a caffeine-free root beer and let me help you savor a fine piece of creationist propaganda:

It starts with 3 pages of introduction stolen from what I can only assume was a grade school book. Certainly not as sophisticated as wikipedia. The type size looks like 15 point Times New Roman. Then it spends another 3 pages giving you the timeline of his life, which they have unashamedly stolen from a Darwin 200th year celebration website (they cite it, but not sure if that forgives a full 3 pages of plagiarism). So yes, they summarize his life in 3 pages and then repeat the summary using a timeline for 3 more.

It is at this point I imagine most young readers would drop the book or skip over the introduction altogether. For those with stronger constitutions, they next start discussing DNA and how complicated it is, quoting scientist after scientist who die a little inside each time their own words are so mangled and misused. They then move on to how 4% similarity to chimps is not a big deal, before we hit the real meat: the section on transitional forms.

Again, I only skimmed this whole "Intro" (although it does not take long to read thanks to the giant type; 50 pages my ass) but this is the most effective section. Eight pages listing evolutionary hoaxes and failed attempts to identify missing links. Obviously there is some gross misunderstanding of what the fossil record tells us, but at least this attacks the scientific theory in a scientific way. From there they start to drift off into chicken and egg issues (which came first, heart or blood) and how darn complicated and interconnected the eye is, both of which I find to be very weak arguments, but at least it is still sorta attacking the theory. Finally we get a confused page on vestigial organs demonstrating that they don't really understand evolutionary theory (duh) -- somehow having extra organs we don't need is not an increase in complexity but a devolution? 29 pages in, 20 pages attacking evolution, the theory. That is all we are going to get.

Now comes the good stuff. A page calling Darwin a racist and a sexist, followed by a zen poem (not really, but it almost reads like one) about how man can not make one blade of grass. Seriously random digression. Then we finally get Darwin directly connected to Hitler. The section is entitled "His Famous Student" as if Darwin knew the man and hadn't died 7 years before Hitler was born. This is mostly 3 pages of Hitler quotes where Hitler uses the term evolution. Most of these passages out of context make little sense (I think they made little sense in context, too) and many are not even particularly ominous -- They are just an opportunity to italicize that Hitler liked using the term evolution in Mein Kampf. For instance:

In our case this term has no meaning. Because everyone who believes in the higher evolution of living organisms must admit that every manifestation of the vital urge and struggle to live must have had a definite beginning in time and that one subject alone must have manifested it for the first time. It was then repeated again and again; and the practice of it spread over a widening area, until finally it passed into the subconscience of every member of the species, where it manifested itself as 'instinct. -- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

Then we get a Hitler Hit List (Hitler should have been a Top 40 DJ), where he organizes the races of the world into their various levels of ape-ness. Hint: You want to be Nordic or German. 36 pages in and I am now strongly offended.

At this point the "Intro" goes off the deep end and becomes a Born Again Christian tract. 3 pages on how Darwin was not an atheist, two pages on how Pen Jillette (!) once wrote how he could understand evangelism if a person truly believed in a Hell, then 10 pages about a choice between the original Mona Lisa (it was important not to get a copy), the keys to a new Lamborghini, a million dollars (in cash), or a parachute. Somehow that was directly translatable into a choice between the four major world religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity.

Oh, and we are being pushed out of a plane, so don't even try to hang glide using the Mona Lisa because that frame is old and will not withstand that kind of stress.

Important to this discussion is the fact that on February 24, 2005, nine-year-old Little Jessica was kidnapped, brutally raped, and then buried alive clutching a stuffed toy. Yes, this crime is horrific and would normally be obscenely out of place discussing the great world religions (were we discussing world religions?), but it is important because it demonstrates that there is a Just God. Somehow.

Mix in hellfire, a random selection of sins from the ten commandments, condemn homosexuality (always important), and then ridicule and demean Hindus, Buddhists, and Muslims by summarizing their faiths with single paragraphs based on the writer's in depth knowledge of similar single paragraph summaries he read ten years ago, before ending with the declaration that therefore, obviously, Jesus Christ is the only way to salvation.
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That.... Is a big waste of money.

They have somehow deluded themselves into believing that this will counter the big, bad secularists with this book giveaway.

1st of all, 18-21 year olds is hitting the issue a bit late. Especially for getting people on board the gospels.

2nd, Origin of the Species is not exactly Robert Ludlum. Most of those kids are not going to even crack the spine of that baby, especially with all the other stuff they have to read.

3rd, Mainly, they are opening themselves up to ridicule. This reads like propaganda. College students love the feeling they are being manipulated by clumsy, transparent propaganda.

I am sure some confused young people might latch onto it as the truth they half-believed already, but I think it is equally likely a similar number will be convinced the other way by the multiple controversies/debates this will spark if anyone actually notices this going on.

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But Kirk Cameron actually looked pretty good. He is almost 39 years old.
Clean living, I guess.

Terror, The Kind You Feel In Your Nether Parts

None of you understand. I'm not locked up in here with you. You're locked up in here with me.

This charming gentleman is Rorschach, the bracingly psychotic vigilante from the Watchmen. Eventually the law catches up to him and he is placed in a prison, where every thug he has locked up over the years is anxious to get their hands on him. At least, they are until it becomes apparent that the balance of power is not quite what they thought it was, as made apparent in his quote.

Similarly, every time you start to think you are getting a handle on this parenting thing, something comes along, knocks you on your ass, and makes you realize it is not your kids trapped in the house with you, but YOU who are trapped in the house with them.

WARNING: This post is a little darker than my normal fare. If you just want funny pictures, scroll down a bit. You have been warned.

It started out as a typical Tuesday. I am scrambling around trying to get the girls ready for Daycare. They need breakfast. They need to be cleaned up. They need clothes. They need suntan lotion. I need to get my own sorry self presentable. I need to load up the car. Tuesdays also offer the extra complications of house keeper, who comes once every two weeks, and gardener, who is relevant because I have to make sure not to leave the dog outside to run away or maul a poor dude making minimum wage with a leaf blower. This Tuesday had it all going on. And of course the girls are always taking advantage of my split attention to demolish something.

Finally we are ready to hit the highway (the housekeeper had gotten her weeks mixed up, so cross that one off the list), but we have to hit the potty one more time before the road. We are now into our 2nd month of serious potty training, where we have taken away the diaper safety net and now march boldly around in our underpants. The girls are doing very well, but they are far from foolproof. Sometimes they give you warning, sometimes they just pee on the floor. Thank goodness for hardwood floors is all I can say. However, if you are diligent and get them to the bathroom after meals, before car rides, and more frequently at the end of the day, they can stay 'Clean and Dry' as our personal mantra goes.

So here I am. End of another long morning, doing the last potty break before the road. I got Kayla up first because she had done close to nothing after breakfast and therefore was more likely to have built up a dangerous bladder level. As is almost always the case, they fight tooth and nail to avoid the toilet and then once there they want to stop and have tea and biscuits while discussing the events of the world. They don't want to go because they don't want to interrupt their playing, yet it wouldn't take very long if they just did it and went. For the girls I think this might be fundamental: They will keep playing up to the point that they wet their pants until they understand that they actually get more playing in if they go use the potty fast.

Also I think there is some basic clenching fine motor skills that need to be mastered, but I think I have digressed into childhood development of waste removal functions quite enough, thank you.

So Kayla is there on her special seat with steps when I hear Rylie getting into something in the kitchen. Earlier they had hit this one drawer filled with toddler/baby odds and ends, including a bunch of old pacifiers that they never used as babies but now like to suck on occasionally, mainly so that they can fight over the pink one. Now when they get into these drawers (which they are not supposed to do) they usually make a mess, scattering odds and ends around the kitchen floor, half of which then need to be washed as they were really not intended to be dropped into the dust bunnies under the stove and then placed in anyone's mouth (please recall the house keeper was supposed to be there today, so the dust bunnies are more like dust badgers). Kayla is definitely in no hurry to finish up, so I figure this is the standard twin distract and grab. I don't think they plan these (yet) but they know how to take advantage.

Now I am hearing some rustling like plastic bags and I know I have to go investigate personally, as Rylie has probably gotten into the sandwich bags and when they do that they tend to scatter them everywhere. And once again, a sandwich bag is not so good at holding sandwiches after being stepped on by dirty baby galoshes. I tell Kayla to stay put and go into the den/kitchen.


Since my massive remodel, the tv/den and kitchen have all become one big great room with an island sitting about two thirds of the way across as I enter from the bathroom. I can't see Rylie because she is on the other side of the island, which happens to be where the drawers with tantalizing kid oriented stuff and sandwich bags are kept. More plastic rustling. I make my way around the island and that is when I see Rylie.

With not one, but two plastic bags on top of her head.

I have seen my share of horror movies and murder procedurals, so I know what killing someone by placing a plastic bag over their head looks like. It looks like this.


Absolute terror, like I have not felt in a very long time with adrenaline released into the blood stream in a single giant splash. A wave of awful tingling traveling up and down your spine and curling around your groin. Real, honest to god I am being attacked by sabretooth tigers, primordial terror. The closest I can recall in my personal experience was the time when I got a call from a hospital nurse to tell me my wife had been in an car accident. Candy only had minor whiplash, but the thick-headed nurse not only failed to start the conversation by telling me she was all right, but actually stopped talking after relating only the fact of the accident, forcing me to ask if my wife was all right. When I found out she was my relief was almost matched by my anger. But as scary as that one sentence on the phone was, it contained no visual to match your child with multiple plastic bags completely over her head.

I let out a "Rylie No!" in a voice which did not sound like my own. It sounded like someone from a movie who had just discovered a dead loved one. So, that is what it really sounds like. It is basically involuntary, an almost hindbrain request that the reality presented before you be declared immediately null and void, as if by just stating a firm negative with all your will you can make it be not so.

There was no pause in my motion. The moment I turned the corner marked the moment I reached for that bag over her head. I think I got off the 'Rylie No!' at about the same time as I pulled the top bag off. It came free easily, its plastic sides sliding easily off the plastic below. Then I grabbed the second bag, which was smaller and more snugly gripping her head.

I think at this point (1 second?, 3 seconds?) I had taken in the scene enough to realize that Rylie did not seem to be in immediate peril. She was moving and not in obvious breathing distress. So when it resisted me I did not tear that second bag off her head with all my strength. But I still yanked that fucker off. Yes I did.

So there we are, on the floor. Rylie is balling because she has been completely overwhelmed by the vehemence of my actions. I am hugging her and telling her she must never ever never ever never ever put plastic bags on her head and hugging her and Kayla has now wandered out of the bathroom with pants around her ankles wanting to know what is going on and I am checking Rylie to make sure she is fine and trying to sound calm enough to not put Kayla into tears and she should never ever never ever put plastic bags on her head.

And I still need to potty Rylie and get her into Daycare.

With a little time to reflect I don't think she was in that much danger. Those plastic bags are actually small enough and, more importantly, stiff enough that I think it would be very hard to asphyxiate yourself with one. Also, the system seemed to work. Rylie got into trouble, the parent heard something going on, went to investigate and stopped it before it got too crazy. It has made me consider all the various plastic bags lying around. A really flexible and big one could be quite dangerous, particularly if it were strong enough to resist a thrashing 2-year old. Those dry cleaning ones strike me as Black Mambas of the plastic bag world.

From now on my clothes are either dirty or cotton or one time wear.



OK, I think that is enough of that. I'll put away the flashlight under my chin and we can leave the fire and go back inside somewhere with bright, artificial lighting. Not everything the girls put on their heads is a Johnny Space Commander product. Sometimes it is a simple pull-up diaper that transforms my terrible twos into terrible twojahedins.



The wifey did not want me to post these, her reasoning being that they were just too embarr- assing. That once something is on the internet it is out there for the world to see...forever. I have two things to say to that: #1 Everyone has embarrassing childhood photos and I suspect the next generation is going to be a lot more comfortable with the digital photograph and the ease with which it is transmitted around the world. I listened to a whole NPR episode about the kind of stuff kids are putting on facebook. Believe me, a diaper on the head is tame, tame stuff. #2 THEY PUT DIAPERS ON THEIR HEADS! Come on, that is just too damn funny to keep to myself.



And let me assure you, this was not a one time event. They have been crazy obsessed with putting those pull-ups on their heads for weeks. [So, yes, I suppose the plastic bag incident was a bit forseeable.] A week ago I went to do the final tucking of the girls into bed and had to pull the diaper off the head of a sleeping Kayla. She had fallen asleep with it on. Sigh. And let me also state for the record that at no time did anybody suggest or encourage this, except by laughing our asses off and taking pictures, of course.

Now you are probably thinking to yourself, "That was awesome. Diaper head pictures. Could anything be funnier?!"

The answer is, in fact, yes: Diaper Head Video.





If this ends up the next Dramatic Prairie Dog I am probably going to be in big trouble. Yes, that is a continuation of the Twin Mind Meld from over a month ago. I think mankind may be in danger.



So lets close this blog entry out with some pure, wholesome cousin adorability. Here are the twins and their cousin Claire on Easter. They are sitting on a mat in my dad's exercise room. The fact they are (more or less) sitting still for these shots is a minor miracle. I can only assume they are catching their breaths long enough to gather the energy to spring up into the air, off their father/uncle's cranium, across the room like spider monkeys, and onto the exercise bike from where they will leap without regard for any possible death or dismemberment onto the weight bench... which they will then promptly start licking. Yeah. Too many jelly beans.



And with that I will take your leave this week (month, half-year, whatever). One reason this blog entry took awhile is that my home computer died about three weeks ago. I have been getting by on laptops and the kindness of strangers, but the big post I had planned was basically tossed out the window. I also hope to get back to my previously planned format of old and new baby adorability, but just needed to get this slightly darker episode out of me.

I finally get it. Nothing is more terrifying than your own kids. Sorry mom and dad.

Fast Forward

Greetings fellow earthlings! While I traveled aboard my fabled space craft through the limitless dark of space to worlds both far and unfathomable, mere weeks passed for me while millenia turned back here. Is there still a place called America, or have the continents drifted so far as to leave this blue ball topographically unrecognizable? Do humans still even use their tongues and fleshy lips to communicate or have we finally evolved to point of brain-to-brain interlocution. Do I need to get myself a clone for organ replacement or has the Replacement Revolution already occurred? If so, ignore this opening sentence and let me begin again:

Salutations my androgene brosters. I am Jim Billy 4.0. I and my nearly limitless supply of similar genotypes eagerly await a recharging meal of yeast paste and reprocessed sea water. Also, death to the primagenitors! Now, where may I acquire a sexless, white jumpsuit with an absurdly large diagonal purple stripe?

Or at least it feels like it has been that long.

As has been quite apparent, my posting has been somewhat irregular for roughly a year now. Except for a few drips and drabs I have dropped like tantalizing bread crumbs, this blog has been effectively defunct since I moved back into my palatial Valley Glen estate (over 2000 square feet now, woohoo!). The number one reason is, of course, gross laziness. The number two reason will be covered in the next post (stay tuned). But the number three reason was that once I fell far behind it became harder and harder to catch up.

The primary on-going reason for this blog is to try and record the ongoing trials and tribulations of fatherhood. Not only is this a creative outlet and frustration release, but in theory it might be nice to have something I could show my kids someday, especially as we more or less completely dropped the ball on baby books. You know how the second child always gets short shrift on the baby book? Well, when you have twins it is instantaneous tiny shrifting. No time, no time. Anyways, once I fell behind during the summer of exhaustion ('08) I had a very hard time moving forward, because I didn't want to leave stuff out that had happened. Of course, events that happened 6-12 months ago don't have the driving immediacy of more recent events so instead of putting anything out there, I just spun my wheels and waited.

Now I am determined to get back in the game. Rather than just jumping ahead in the "story" or trying to go completely back a year, my present solution is this: Two part posts. BAM! Genius. One part present day, the other blasts from the past. That is a one two punch of baby adorability that is without mercy.

Or alternatively, it will be a god-awful mess. Time will tell. And just like the Bush legacy, it may truly be centuries before we can know for sure.

As I have babbled on for quite a bit already, for the "present day" half of this blog let me simply post a video of the girls attempting a Vulcan mind meld. Honestly, to this day I have no idea what they were up to, but it was definitely some sort of bizarre twin behavior, the sort of thing you might expect to see in the hallway of an empty hotel or anything from the set of Full House. They were doing this for a couple of minutes before I thought to grab my camera.



My mind to your mind.

Now compare that to this next series which are the remaining shots from our trip to Austin in January 2008. You can clearly see the toddler/baby split. Today they got hair, high level speech, 10 more pounds, several more inches of heights, and, of course, green-striped shirts. Totally different.

Here we are packing to go on the trip. This was back in the days when we didn't have to pay to fly the girls. The airlines just made us check them inside luggage.

Ho ho, you have seen through my little charade. The airlines didn't make us do anything. Rylie just climbed into the bag and we couldn't get her out, so we gave her a box of graham crackers and zipped it up. Tip the skycap an extra twenty and you are traveling light.

Oh yes, there are levels and levels to my deceptions. Did we enclose my 1-year olds in suitcases and sneak them on a plane or were they just playing with them? You may never know.

It was the second one. The playing thing. That is what happened. Now you know.

Here are the twins in their metal cages of doom from the first hotel we checked into. I suppose the bars are close enough together they are not going to choke themselves, but it did not strike me as the safest or most comfortable crib I had ever run across.

Let me take this moment to bitch about the Austin Hilton Garden Inn. Because I made my reservation late (typical) I ended up at this "overflow" hotel. But not all nights were "overflow" nights, i.e. the conference discount did not apply to all nights... only some of them.

Mind you this was their comp- lication, not mine. I just wanted a hotel for 3-4 consecutive nights with no trouble. Their reservations lady dealt with all of the ins and outs this oddly byzantine reservation structure and assured me I had a room. Not so. They lost the second half of the reservation, where I was supposed to be paying more, by-the-way. And despite having a wife and two one-year old babies they kicked us out of the hotel, this even after a great deal of pleading to the contrary. They put infants on the curb. This adorable face (Classic Kayla), out in the winter cold.

Sons of bitches.

Fortunately the story has a happy ending. We were able to force our way into their sister (and superior) Hilton Hotel, which was closer to my conference and less money. So [cover the eyes of the little ones] FUCK the Hilton Garden Inn. Fuck them. All right, let's move on.

I might have oversold the "out on the streets" angle a little bit, as I actually did have family in town. This is Mark Land and his kids with my kids. Mark is my step brother, a generally good guy who was the closest thing I had to an older sibling growing up.


I would have to say all things considered, if you can be the oldest sibling go with that. Nothing wrong with Mark, per se, I just don't like being on that side of that power dynamic. Then again, there is no joy quite like irritating an older brother, so maybe I will have to re-evaluate.


Back to the wee ones. While Daddy sometimes attended boring lectures on space and time, Team Elf Kicking, Inc. managed to find plenty of time to hit the town. We had lunch with margaritas, toured the local children's museum, went to the LBJ presidential library, and visited the University of Texas alumni club and Bevo museum.

The girls do love their quesadillas and mommy and daddy sure loved their margaritas. Check out the picture of father and child gracing the very top of this blog. Can you say pupil dilation?


Here is the gruesome twosome at the children's museum, standing on some sort of platform with a tree growing out of it. Inside. Good going, Austin, now my children don't know where trees grow.

And is that Kayla playing a piece of corn like a clarinet? Kayla, that is a grain not a woodwind! Dammit, this means another 12 hours in the learning tank...

Er, I mean, "napping box."

Having fully planned out my daughters' future we took them to their first presidential library so they can start to get a feel for the position. Well, only one is going to be president and the other will be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. But someone besides her presidential sister will have to appoint her. I will not have my girls accused of nepotism. Who will be prez I will let them decide among themselves. Probably whichever one gets a photograph taken while using a corn cob bong, well, they'll have to settle for Justice.

The LBJ library is nice because it has an actual reproduction of the Oval office: 7/8 scale.

That's right, 7/8. Why make one so close and not just do it 1 to 1? (Yes, I know, probably because it had to fit in the building already there.) The point of a scale model is to build it to a different SCALE. Imagine building a scale model of a battleship to 7/8 scale. It would be awesome because you could also use it as a battleship. Only it would cost more to build than the battleship it is scaled to, as it requires bizarre 7/8 parts.

The LBJ presidential library is located on the University of Texas, also home of some sort of impressive cattle ranch. I mean pictures of cows are EVERYWHERE here. I wasn't entirely clear whether they milked them or slaughtered them for hamburger, but clearly that building behind the girls can hold a lot of big bull behind.

They also have a Bevo museum below the Alumni club where we grabbed some food. For the mascot impaired, Bevo is the name of the Bull that UT people love so much. More specifically, they love his horns. As, in "Hook'em Horns!" Then for some reason they shake their hands in the surfing term, hang loose. Or the rock and roll praise for the devil. It's two fingers up is all I know, and that is a dangerous place to be.


Supposedly the origin of the Bevo name is that Texas A&M grabbed poor Bo, as he was known at the time, and branded "13 - 0", the score of A&M's 1915 win over Texas on his rump. A creative U of Texas fellow, rather than live with such ignominy, altered the brand so it read "Bevo" instead. Like all good stories this one is completely false, but in the presence of a good story vacuum apocryphal tales reign supreme. <-- This could be confusingly mistaken for a terrible mishmosh of a metaphor, when in truth it is merely a proven scientific fact.

That's right. Science. If you can't handle it, get out of the beaker.

Anyway, here is one last picture of the cuties, Kayla up front. Holy Creh-Ap they have grown. If I changed that much in a year I could be a Satyr by now.

Some people suggest I may already be one. [Suggestive eyebrow wiggle]

Finally, I would be remiss if I failed to mention our final night in Austin, where Candice and I grabbed a baby sitter, dinner, and a movie. But not just any movie, but a full, bad-to-the-bone, Elvis sing-a-long. If you have not seen the '68 Comeback Special I would strongly recommend it. Not only does it have some of the greatest live Elvis performances ever captured on film -- just raw, growly, powerful, and awesome in a way his radio relase stuff doesn't even glimpse -- but it also contains perhaps the most surreal, bizarre, funny, and oddly revealing (and not in a good way) pre-recorded musical sequence (Trouble/Guitar Man). He fights people in a bordello using Kung Fu, I shit you not. Staggeringly awesome. I am not at all the Elvis demographic and it blew me away, all the way from the folk/blues pure live stuff to the ultracampy musical extremes.

Austin is kind of a quirky town, holding out as best it can against the raging storm of TEXAS that blows all around it. Check it out but stay away from Hippie Hallow.

Dem peoples is nude.