don’t panic

It rained today!!

Okay, so it was really more of a sprinkling… Well, maybe a light drizzle… We could possibly call it heavy cloud… Thick fog?

Hey, the ground was wet!

Yeah, you know those mist-maker things that they put in amusement parks to keep the crowds standing at the “wait time – 1 hour from this point” signs from rioting in really hot weather? This was about half that volume.

It wasn’t much, but it was just enough so that the freeways were slick and all the idiot SoCal drivers could prove that their anti-lock brakes really didn’t lock. No, instead, you stand on your brakes while your $40,000 sports utility vehicle ROLLS into the back of the guy in front of you.

My commute was further enlightened by the coincidental start of San Diego State University’s fall semester. So along with the inevitable traffic caused by the normal dorks, now I also had SoCal college kids to deal with. Your average SDSU driver is:

A. Young. Driving for less than five years. This also means that they think their youthful reflexes will somehow compensate for any lack of experience they might have.

B. Rushed. It’s Crash week. They MUST be in class on time if they have ANY chance at all of getting into that triple-overloaded, and highly desirable Chem 101 class. I went there. I know the way things work. I once walked into an Upper Division Art/Design class with room for 32 students. There were 68 crashers standing and mulling about, and all but two (myself included, unfortunately) were Seniors.

** I have to break off on a tangent here, because this brings up an issue that I am very confused about. In that class, if you were not either a Senior, a Freshman (who would not be taking an upper division class anyway), a member of an ethnic minority, or blessed by God Himself, you simply could not get in. Why is it that because I’m white-bread America I am being given secondary status at a PAID University? I like to think of myself as being in favor of minority compensation, but this one has me stumped. I pay the same as the Mexican American guy next to me to get in. My test scores are the same. We’re both equal as far as completed units. So why am I standing outside in line at the Course Corrections booth while he’s working on his first assignment? I had one semesters during my Junior year where I signed up for six classes and did not get into a single one. I could understand this preferential treatment in a FREE system, but why am I shelling out big bucks (my tuition quadrupled during my time there) so that I can NOT get into a class? After SIX years there, I finally gave up and took a design job, only to learn that they don’t give a damn about your diploma in this industry unless you happen to have schooled in Switzerland. Sigh… onward!

C. Late. What college student isn’t? Most figure they can hit that snooze button at least four times and make up for it by driving like a maniac on the freeway. Breakfast is an old bag of Fritos that they stuff into their mouth at eighty-five miles per hour while they try to get their cell phone to talk to the nifty new automated college admissions system.

D. Angry. Of course they are! They didn’t get any of their classes…

The traffic sucks. Their car has about two cents worth of gas to get them through the week (not because they are lacking the funds to fill it, but because they “just don’t have the time”), and they just spilled two-day old Pepsi down the front of their jeans.

E. Listening to loud music. They have traded their love-song/heart-throb/trendy pop culture musicians from high school, for heavy-angst/deeply depressing/cyber-techno beat “artists” of today (which are really just the same bands looking for a comeback by changing their hair, their volume, and the bass of their music). They have the canon bass speakers “equalized” up so high that the rear-view mirror in the vehicle two cars back is vibrating enough to make the driver sick. Forget about emergency vehicles. The only way they would realize that a fire truck was nearby was if the thing rolled over them. If you ask them why they listen to “music” that way, they always say, “Because it relaxes me…”

F. Rude (you knew this was coming). Yes, indeed. This is not a campus of higher learning, where somber intellectuals gather efficiently to improve themselves… This is total SoCal, “screw-you” driving at it’s purest.

The freeway closest to SDSU is East/West 8. There is a single exit in which these young, rushed, late, angry, music-numbed assholes are all trying frantically to cram into. Forget the law. Forget ethics. Forget being polite. This is WAR! On any given day, you will find at least a mile and a half of bumper to bumper traffic in the two right lanes as it exits. There’s only one exiting lane, but that doesn’t matter because half of the drivers blast up past those impatiently waiting in line so that they can force their vehicle back in, inches from the yellow safety divider. This of course causes a major backlog of traffic by those who just want to go straight and get past the hellish pack of juveniles that somehow appeared around them. It’s ugly. It’s dangerous. It’s every single day between 7 am and 9. Sometime, about two weeks after school starts, the other half of the drivers start to wonder why they are waiting in line when they could be doing the same thing that “everybody else” is doing, and pull out to join the maniacal horde in a free-for-all rolling traffic orgy.

My wife and I often have fantasies about the various ways we could “reward” rude people for existing. We think of things like a high-intensity laser mounted to the side of your car so you could etch the word “PRICK” onto the door of the monster truck that just cut you off. Or maybe a reverse-side sticker that could be slapped onto some jerk’s windshield when they steal your parking space, so they would see the words, “DUMB ASS” staring back at them until they can find a razor blade and scrape it off. Or how about “I’M A TOTAL LOSER” henna tattoos that fit covertly just inside the brim of a baseball hat. Slip one into your favorite pervert’s cap, nice and snug against their forehead. Yup. That would be wonderful.

So when my wife calls me and lets me know that she and the Bit went puddle-jumping that afternoon, I smile warmly, for I know that the flip-side to this delightful moisture is just waiting for me and my commute home on Freeway 8. (more…)

We drove to Julian today. It’s a touristy little mountain-country town that specializes in being cute and celebrating apples. It’s about a forty-five minute drive up into the high country (you can call them mountains if you want, but anyone from Colorado would laugh in your face) through winding roads and “nice” countryside. Then again, anything would be nice compared to our massive white-bread suburbia. When you get to the top, there are even real trees. Real trees are any type of non-olive drab foliage. We’re talking GREEN here. Hey, I’m color blind. Remember the color you used to get when you mixed together everything in your water color set in kindergarten? That ugly sort of brownish blech… That’s what everything living looks like to me in San Diego. To actually see a GREEN tree is something that nearly takes my breath away.

I grew up camping as a kid. I’d either go with my dad, my friends or the Boy Scouts. The Scouts were fun because we really only used it as an excuse to go camping about twice a month. Who needed badges? We wanted to see rattle snakes.

But my lovely wife grew up hating camping. To her, it represented nothing but unpleasant memories. Between her contacts and her allergies, all the great outdoors offered her was an uncomfortable night’s sleep. So while I was smiling and sniffing the air, admiring the way the recent rain had brought out all kinds of wonderful earthy smells, she was reliving moments of childhood hell. Sixth Grade Camp, Church Camp… It was one of the few times that we’ve had almost nothing in common.

And of course, the Bit was snoring away in the back, missing the whole thing.

I had forgotten just how much of my childhood was spent in or around trees, bushes, dusty trails, swampy streams, and big rocks. Like most kids, I really did like to be outside in the dirt and wildlife. If I wasn’t playing in the mud, I was tromping across the canyon so I could come home smelling like a sage bush. Up there in the mountains today, I found myself longing for a hike; it was almost like the trees were calling me to come back and lounge in their shade.

Some people aren’t comfortable around nature. It’s not necessarily wrong to be that way, and it’s more than understandable considering how dependant we are on all the comforts that the “big city” has to offer. How could we do without movie theaters, shopping malls, convenience stores and Denny’s? I’ve gotten spoiled by these marvels, when I used to be happy jumping perilously between boulders and over streams; climbing trees and scrambling up pine-needle covered hills so that I could just admire the view. I miss the smells. The damp earth and dark soil on your hands. I even miss things like grubs and worms and snakes.

Once in a while, I see a lizard sunning himself out on the cement. He’ll see me, and freeze, not really wanting to move because the sun feels so damn nice. I take a moment and remember the days of hunting horny toads and big, sandy-colored cousins of the little guy that’s just out catching some rays before me now.

Once, when I was about fifteen, I was hiking around the canyon hills near my house with a friend when we spied a cat hopping around on some rocks below us. It wasn’t a house cat, this. It was a Lynx (or Bobcat… I don’t know how to tell them apart). We were really surprised, not because we feared the animal, but because most of the local larger wildlife had already been driven away by urban expansion. The deers had all been taken out by cars, and even the snakes seemed to have gone on to safer hunting grounds. So to see a wild feline was unheard of. We watched in awe, and sadness; knowing that it was only a matter of time before it too would end up as another stain at the edge of the freeway.

Out trip into the mountains was a bit like that. As I stared out the window, admiring the tree line, I knew that I had already given up a part of me to urban life and I could never go back. It wasn’t that I couldn’t give up the comforts of that life, but rather that I couldn’t stand to be without the company of my wife and child. We’re a team now, and I had accepted to live with my wife in a happy medium of safe and reliable access to civilization. I wanted her, more than I wanted the relaxing solitude of the forest. She’s very, very worth it, and with the Bit our team is three.

Someday, when my daughter is a little older, perhaps I can take her out camping and let her decide if she likes to tromp in the shade of the pines like her old man. I hope so. I do miss it. (more…)

I was surfing one of the message boards that I admin today, when I noticed a number of topics of political nature. Talking politics is all the rage now that Survivor is finally over, and though I was tempted, I resisted the urge to jump in and donate my $.02 to the party of choice.

But it got me thinking about my rather odd view on the whole political arena. I’ve never been all that interested in politics, much, I think, from the fact that no one in school ever bothered to explain WHY things were the way they were. American history was an entire semester of rote memorization and regurgitation. Nothing more. No background. No love. No passion.

I always found myself saying, “so what?”

“This is important, it’s our HISTORY!” The teacher would respond.

Thus the name of the class… “Yes, but WHY is it important?”

“Well, uh… so that we don’t make the same mistakes our forefathers made. It gives us a sense of national pride.”

Hmmm… Not quite the answer I was looking for. I mean, here I was at the prime of my life, a literal sponge for learning, and I was being bored out of my skull. Imagine the movie Star Wars shown through a ViewMaster, all dialogue ripped out and replaced by a series of text lists showing dates and times that certain events took place. Ick! Now take out the visuals completely and replace them with artist renditions of the events. Then add to the lists a 40 page commentary on how the details of the events were subject to interpretation depending on what political view you sided with, either Rebel or Imperial.

THAT is history in high school. Gah! It’s a wonder we come out of there even knowing what the constitution IS, let alone what it MEANS.

So naturally, when I entered the prerequisite Government class as a senior, I was more than ready to finally have someone explain what it was all about. Only the craved explanation never came. It was really more of the same. Sure, we did some cool stuff, like a simulated courtroom. But when it came to telling the story, it was the ViewMaster all over again.

Now, with college behind me, and a child to occupy any real “free” time I might have, I no longer have the will to look for the “why” in our national heritage. And that apathy has extended right into the current political foray.

It’s not that I think voting is unimportant. I also believe that there are issues worth fighting for. But I’m in the marketing business. I KNOW what’s hype, and what’s doable commitment. All this pandering around on “issues” is so distasteful to me that I just want to find the nearest candidate and wretch on their shoes. Forget a handshake.

I’m about as non-partisan as you can get and not vote Green. My wife is already there. So when either of us mention the R or D word, we kind of duck. To put myself in either camp, when they are both so damn pitiful is enough to make me want to move to Canada and accept a Queen.

“You’re a Democrat, aren’t you,” asked my boss a couple of days ago.

I didn’t know what to say. I think my registered political affiliation is indeed Democrat, but I actually find myself embarrassed to acknowledge it. The funny thing is, I would feel the exact same way were I registered Republican. I’m not quite ready to go Independent, so somewhere along the line, I probably flipped a coin and chose what I thought at the time as the lesser of two evils.

I’m so tired of people telling me, “How can you be a [insert party of choice] when all THEY want is [insert trendy media negative]??!” Give me a break. When was the last time you actually saw the various parties working together to solve any serious issues? Like… Never. They are both so busy making sure that what ever idea or plan the other party is pushing is ground into the dirt, that nothing of any consequence ever gets done. Between rider bills, purchased political agendas, and a general lack of willing cooperation, our fine country has turned into a joke to the rest of the world.

If our government was a corporation, and the American public the stock holders, most of the upper management (including the president) would be out on their butts within a week. But we hold onto political affiliation the same way we hold on to religious belief. In fact, many people don’t see a separation.

“If you are REALLY a Christian, then you simply CAN’T be a Democrat…”

Oh yeah? Watch me.

Maybe I should go Green this year. At least they’re not so completely blind as to believe that the party you “belong to” defines who you are.

I was sitting in the CEO’s office today with the Art Director, discussing grand and wondrous plans for the company, when there was an approaching thumping sound outside in the hall and then a rapid and frantic knocking at the door.

“Come…” said the CEO, not quite getting to “in” before the door burst open and a wildly flailing female carrying a glossy magazine above her head came dancing into the room.

“We’re in!! We’re in!!” She squealed in a high pitched voice that caused us to duck our heads a bit. “We did it!!”

“Huh?” The three of us said all at once as four other people appeared at the door to see what all the commotion was about.

“We made it into HOW!”

“You’re kidding!!??” Proclaimed the Art Director, finally understanding what was going on. The CEO and myself stared at each other in confusion. Then I realized that she meant HOW magazine and my eyebrows went up.

By then of course, most of the now ten or so people in the room understood that we had won some kind of award and high-fives circulated along with the general feeling of awe.

“There, there!” She said pointing to the picture of our entry when we had managed to calm her down enough to speak coherently. And there it was indeed.

It was very cool. Getting into HOW as a design firm is a bit like getting to go to a Presidential dinner. Nobody will really care about you in the long run because there are a whole lot of people there, and they do it all the time. But the very fact that you WERE there means that at some point you were important enough to invite.

Our entry wasn’t even all that amazing, but the fact that it got in meant that we finally had something other than client work to put up on the walls of our conference room.

Oh, happy day! (more…)

WARNING: The following entry is targeted towards those with CHILDREN. Readers without offspring may find themselves nauseated and disgusted; vowing to a life of celibacy. The material presented may only be understandable by parents. If you have a sudden bought of confusion, or a more general feeling of “not fitting in,” do NOT panic. This reaction is completely normal and can be reduced by visiting or speaking to three or four single friends about the upcoming episode of Survivor.

I knew it would happen eventually. It’s the kind of thing that you read about and go, “ewww…”. Then you hear about it happening to one of your friends with a child the same age. The odds are against you.

And it happens…

Your child does the Dastardly Dump… the Water Woo Woo.

So there I am, giving my daughter a bath. She’s happily drowning her little Elmo figurine and tossing bubble foam around the walls, when she gets that glassy-eyed look that I have come to know so well. My mouth opens as if to say something, but I know it’s already too late. The warm water, coupled with a big dinner and a lot of running around has sped up her digestion and her previously so-well-timed evening poopie has come just a little early.

“Uhh… honey?…” I called out timidly, not quite remembering the proper parental response to this situation. And then I recalled that over the last few days she has been flip-flopping between gooey-runny and packed-chunky. I started to panic. What if it’s gooey-runny? How do you clean that up?!!

And then, there it was, floating innocently and safely; as compact and manageable as I could ask for. My daughter turned to me with a proud smile. I expected her to say, “That was fun! Can I do it again?” So I cleaned up the little brown raft and drained and refilled the tub. She liked that, of course, since it extended her bath time.

So tonight, after she had been put to bed, I got to thinking about all the completely disgusting things that I have accepted as “normal” in the last two and a half years.

You get thrown right into it cold-turkey when you first bring your bundle of joy home from the hospital. She’s sooooo cute; all cuddly and wrinkled with tiny hands and feet that you just want to kiss… And she’s crapping dark black tar all over the place.

After you have called the doctor and he has spent no less than thirty minutes convincing you that your child is not dying and the color will fade to a nice shade of green in a few days (green!!??)… You can go on to easier stuff, like getting peed on.

I remember the first time it happened to me. She smiled (of course) and launched a stream of warm water right into the middle of my chest. Piece of cake. My wife on the other hand, caught the sticky stuff in the face.

Projectile poopies. When they’re young, you have to be really careful. It’s the same principle as standing in front of a loaded gun. You just don’t risk it. She got caught off guard while changing a diaper.

BPBPHHLLAAAAT!!

“OH! Uhhhh… Uhhhh!!!” And my wife was staring down at her chest and holding her hands up. She was speechless.

“I’ll finish here. You go take care of that,” I said calmly, while resisting the urge to bust out laughing because I knew that if I did, she would kill me… slowly.

“Ohhhh… Ohhhhh…” she continued.

“Hey, honey? Are you alright?”

“Oh man… Look what YOUR child did!!”…

But we got used to that too. My brother-in-law summed it up best when he mentioned over dinner one evening at the folk’s house.

“I can handle anything. Sticky, runny, barfy… Anything, as long as it belongs to MY kid.”

And he’s right. I don’t care anymore either. I can pretty much clean up chunky white milk barf at three in the morning now and not even gag at the stench. But that’s because it comes out of MY child. I could never in a million years do that for someone elses little brat. I think it has to do with the fact that they somehow come out of YOUR body. They are of your seed; a part of you.

It makes a BIG difference. Which is why you should tip your baby sitter really well when she shows up at your door to take care of your newborn, with an extra set of clothes (for her, not the baby).

(more…)