Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 631

Zelda fangirl

The Legend of Zelda turns 25 this week.  In honor of the iconic videogame, I offer this brief anecdote:

There are hundreds, if not thousands of reasons why I love my wife, but many of them fall under one overarching heading:

She is cool.

And while there may be many, many reasons why this is so, here us one of my favorites:

When Elysha was in high school, she once skipped school in order to spend the day playing The Legend of Zelda. 

Total hotness.

[image error]

Freeze

This is my daughter, wearing my wife's hat and exceedingly pleased about it.

It's official.  I'd like to to freeze her age.

I'm sure that I'll enjoy subsequent years a great deal, but if given the choice, I'd be all-in for two years, one month and three days.

Which honk is the right honk?

The traffic light changes to green.  The car in front of me does not move. 

I'm not angry or even annoyed.  This can happen to anybody.  I just want him to move. 

I want to give him a friendly beep.

I say that a quick double beep is in order.

Others (including my wife) say that a double beep sounds annoyed and a single beep is better.

Which is the friendliest of all the beeps?

My stock tip of the day

I don't watch the Oscars, and I very much wanted a Twitter application last night that would block any tweet containing the word Oscar, but it's worth noting that although I did not watch, I was almost certain of who the winners would be before the show even started.

For the second year in a row (and perhaps longer), USA Today went ten for ten in predicting the Oscar results.

Considering that you can wager on the Oscars with several offshore gambling websites (and coming soon to Las Vegas), this would seem like a reasonable opportunity to make some bank next year.  

A literary reference fifteen years in the making

In 1997 I took an English class that featured the writing of Anne Askew, a sixteenth century English poet who was persecuted as a heretic.  She is the only woman on record to have been tortured in the Tower of London before being burnt at the stake.

The class was quite difficult.  The text was written in Old English, and it was not easy reading by any stretch of the imagination. 

I often found myself wondering why the hell we were reading it at all. 

Almost fifteen years later, I have now run into the first Anne Askew reference since my college days.  My current book club novel, THE TOWER, THE ZOO AND THE TORTOISE, by Jane Stuart, references Askew's torture at the Tower of London (the setting for the book).

A literary reference fifteen years in the making.  Was it worth the effort of that class and the long wait?

Maybe.

There's a definite joy that one derives in acknowledging a reference that few others might understand or even notice. 

A thousand times more powerful than the satisfaction of an inside joke.  

And it also gave me reason to research the details of Askew's execution, which were horrific but interesting nonetheless:

Askew was burnt at Smithfield, London aged 25, on 16 July 1546, with John Lascelles and two other Protestants. Anne Askew was carried to the execution in a chair as she could not walk (having been tortured for information prior to the death sentence). She was dragged from the chair to the stake which had a small seat attached to it, which she sat astride. The executioner hung a bag of gunpowder around her neck as a humane act in order to speed her death along, and it exploded nearly immediately.  Those who saw her execution were impressed by her bravery, and reported that she did not scream until the flames reached her chest.

This execution took place 450 years ago, and I still felt a pit in my stomach when reading about the details of this young woman's death. 

Sexist pig ladies

Madeline Albright on being a female Secretary of State and a diplomat:

"There is a great advantage to being a woman.  I think we are better at personal relationships and have the ability to tell it like it is when necessary."

Sarah Palin on her possible Presidential run:

"Nobody is more qualified really to multitasking and doing all the things you need to do as a president than a woman and as a mom."

These statements are notable for two reasons:

1.  Both are clearly sexist, and if made by a men, would immediately be attacked by feminists. 

Am I wrong?

If Madeline Albright can claim female dominance in personal relationships and the ability to "tell it like it is when necessary," would it also be acceptable for Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to claim that men make better generals because they think more strategically than women?  Or for Joe Biden to claim that men make better Presidents because they handle pressure more effectively? 

And if Sarah Palin can claim that women are better qualified to handle the multitude of duties on the Presidential plate, would it also be acceptable for Mitt Romney to counter with the claim that men forge more effective partnerships because we are less catty and mean?

Of course not. 

Yet both Albright and Palin get away with these statements unscathed (and almost unnoticed) because of a second, equally notable reason:

2. Most men don't give a damn if Madeline Albright, Sarah Plain or anyone else wants to claim female superiority in any realm.

Talk is cheap.

My future poetry collection begins here

I'm thinking of assembling the poems that I have written over the years into a collection that my agent can then sell for millions of dollars because poetry i s super popular and exceptionally profitable and super sexy.

Sounds good.  Right?

As I begin the process, I thought I'd post a few of the poems here to see what my readers think. 

Here's the first. A short and silly one with a title that has changed about a dozen times since I first wrote it.

Thoughts?

______________________________

On the Nature of Modern Day Hieroglyphics

A little boy in brown corduroy

couldn't read the sign.

He pushed the door, fainted to the floor,

startled by a lady's behind.

In-law visitation

My in-laws travel with a lot of technology.

  

Temper your advice based upon the bell curve

My friend, Tom, recently watched this TED Talk and thought of me.

The talk centers on what the Rufus Griscom and Alisa Volkman call the four taboos of parenting. 

One deals with the propensity of women to avoid speaking about their miscarriages. 

With no experience in this realm, I will refrain from commenting on this one. 

The remaining three are:

You can't say that you didn't immediately love your baby. 

As Tom said when he brought this to my attention:

"You've been saying that ever since Clara was born!"

And it's true.  I loved Clara when she was born, but in comparison to how I feel about her today, I barely loved her. 

I marginally loved her. 

I probably loved her as much as I love ice cream cake and the New England Patriots. 

I loved her because I was expected to love her. 

And I was also hungry when Clara was born, which isn't an excuse for not loving your newborn daughter enough except it is. 

I was really, really hungry. 

I hadn't eaten in almost eighteen hours, and I had barely slept the night before.  And Clara would not stop crying.  After extracting her from my wife via C-section, a nurse placed her in my arms and abandoned me.  While she counted sponges and sutures and instruments for the next hour, I was stuck holding this screaming newborn.  

In all of the useless childbirth classes that I was forced to endure, this important fact was left out: 

It only takes about ten minutes to extract a baby via C-section, but it takes more than an hour to put the woman back together again.

And I was hungry, damn it.  So how could I have been expected to love Clara in the profound and moving way that most people claim?

I just wanted a burger. 

It may be taboo to say that you didn't love your child very much when he or she was born, but I have been saying it for two years, as Tom can readily attest.

The remaining two taboos are:

You can't talk about how lonely having a baby can be. You can't say that your average level of happiness has declined since your baby was born. 

According to Griscom and Volkman, as taboo as they might be, both of these statements are generally true, and they cite the following statistics in support of their assertions:

58% of new mothers express a feeling of loneliness following the birth of their baby. 

The average degree of martial satisfaction declines precipitously following the birth of a child and only rises after the child has gone off to college, as shown in this chart:

These admittedly compelling statistics lead Griscom and Volkman to assert that candor and brutal honesty are critical to successful parenting.  They believe that soon-to-be parents need to be made aware of these unfortunate facts of life so that they can be better prepared for what lies ahead and establish reasonable expectations prior to the birth of their child.   

I agree, except for one important caveat:

Whenever I dispense advice or information based upon statistical evidence, I always take the bell curve into consideration.

For example, although 58% of women report increased loneliness following the birth of their first child, 42% do not.

42% is a big number. 

So when I am speaking to a new mother, I attempt to fix her position on the bell curve before choosing what to say.

I ask myself:

Is this person of average, above average or below average intelligence? Is this person in a healthy, loving relationship? Does this person possess a reasonable degree of perspective on life?

Only then do I proceed.

If I am faced with a generally dissatisfied, less-than-skilled basket case, then yes, I would probably let her know about the 58% of women who experience loneliness following childbirth, because she is more likely to fall into this category.

But if I am speaking to a smart, organized, emotionally stable problem solver, I would be much less likely to warn her about the possibility of postpartum loneliness.

It's simply less likely that she will experience it.     

The same applies to the statistics regarding martial satisfaction.  Though the chart above is compelling, there is an invisible chart lying just behind it that illustrates the minority of couples who did not fit the line graph (and those who exceed it). 

Again, the bell curve is at work here.

So when my friend, Jeff, asked me about the trials and tribulations of becoming a parent, I told him to ignore the naysayers and their doomsday warnings because Jeff consistently operates on the top end of the bell curve in almost all regards (excluding height). 

He's a smart, capable, successful, well rounded guy.  I told him that my happiness has only increased with the birth of my daughter and that parenting is not as difficult as so many claim. 

I expected Jeff to handle parenting masterfully, and I told him as much.

And he has. 

A good rule of thumb (and perhaps an entry into Bartlett's someday?):

Average is only applicable if you are average.

Imperfect beauty

The photo is unfocused, grainy, poorly framed, and poorly lit, but I think that might make it better than if it had been done well.

I love this photograph of my daughter. 

I see utter joy in its imperfection.