beach ghost

On the Turning Away

2009-02-26T00:06:00.002-05:00

I signed into my account today and saw how long it's been since the last time I deigned to post--over 3 months. I'd been thinking about it for a few weeks, but that last bit of info was what put it over the top for me: it's time to put this blog to bed.

There are a few reasons that led to my decision:

Childbirth. Once the mini-BG was born, the range of things that I could waste my free time on was drastically reduced to only those that I really, really wanted to do. As evidenced here, blogging usually didn't make the cut.
Yadda yadda yadda. While I wanted to dedicate time to writing essays (or rants), more often than not what I ended up with would have made a nifty Facebook status update.
Facebook. I've enjoyed using FB more in the past few months than I have slogging over to here for the past year or so. With FB, all I need is a sentence and I feel like I've fed the blog beast, even if that content has all the depth of a Michael Bay movie. It also inspired a lot more frivolity on my part; everything here feels like it needed to have weight. As if, "It's a blog post, it'd better be important." Over at FB, I can wax whimsical for a few words about how great "wax" is as a verb, and I'm out. It's been a very freeing experience.

So, I'll be slowly dismantling this. Posts that I've cribbed from my other Web haunts will be the first to go, and then I'll start moving stuff to either FB or the virtual dustbin of the hard drive.

Adieu then, blogosphere. We'll always have Paris.

We'll Make History

2008-11-06T22:44:00.004-05:00

Greetings! Time to dust off the cobwebs from this blog, ignore the pregnant pause I left behind with that last post, and type about something else entirely.

On Tuesday night, I got home after having cast my vote, and turned on the tube for a multi-hour bombardment of punditry. MLW came home a short time later, and was soon similarly encamped, with laptop open to keep up with the lastest Internet snark.

The mini-bg, however, was less than enthralled, and demanded near-constant entertainment in the form of Candy Land, Operation, puzzle building, and a plethora of other emphemera. When bedtime rolled around, both MLW and I were more than ready to get the toddler tucked in.

But as we headed up the stairs, I had a thought. MLW and I both wanted to watch as much of the coverage as possible, because we were both fully aware that there was a pretty good chance that we would be watching history unfold. But our daughter will only understand the night's signficance in hindsight. To her, it won't be groundbreaking to watch a black man be elected president; she won't fully understand the sea change our country had to go through (and is still going through) in order him to get there. She won't know a world in which this wasn't possible--she'll just accept that it is.

I had many reasons for being happy on Tuesday, but that thought was probably the best reason of all.

Free Fallin'

2008-09-15T23:31:00.002-04:00

In the past few years, when asked to describe the environment in which I work, I used to state that it was akin to "working for a dot-com that will never go under."

I may turn out to be very, very wrong.

Sign in Stranger

2008-08-30T10:57:00.003-04:00

When you've not posted to your blog in over a month--despite having plenty of things to type about--and you're looking to get back in the saddle, what's the best way to go about it? Update your link list.

So, the New Beast that I last spoke about here has almost finished its journey toward publication. Link's on the right.

Fireflies

2008-07-20T08:10:00.001-04:00

A few weeks ago, MLW took the mini-BG in for her yearly heart check-up. It's a new doctor now, since the prior one no longer sees children on account of his susceptibility to infection (owing to the fact that, get this, he had a heart transplant in the last year). This year went off without a hitch, primarily because the toddler's now of an age that she can be distracted throughout the tests by various cartoons.

Aside from getting her current stats (over 32 lbs., 3'3" tall), the docs found that her condition is great. Her heart is always going to be "noisy," since she still has a mass on the outside wall, but it has not gotten larger, and hopefully as she continues to grow it will remain the same size as her heart increases in size. She had to wear a monitor for 24 hours, which she'll most likely have to do every time she goes to a check-up, but she was a real trooper and reaped a reward of "junks" (anything sugary or extremely fattening).

Three years on, I'm less inclined to remember the exact date when the mini-BG had her surgery, as it was not an easy day to have lived through. In its place are these check-ups. Every year I'm able to convince myself that I view these appointments with a certain nonchalance, and every year I find that I've been unconsciously getting more and more tense as the time MLW takes her approaches. When I speak to her afterwords, I can almost feel myself unclenching.

That night, the mini-BG and I walked to our local park. I watched as she chased after fireflies, an insect she's only really discovered this summer. She was completely unmindful of the monitor and the leads that were taped to her chest, her concentration focused solely on those brief glowing flashes. I watched, and thought back, and was thankful.

Children Are Our Future

2008-06-26T06:51:00.002-04:00

So, the mini-BG occasionally goes to a nearby museum that has nifty child-focused activities during the week. One afternoon she crafted what appeared, at first glance, to be two-thirds of a snowman. Its base was painted royal blue and it had two plastic beads for eyes.

When our nanny asked her what it was, she replied simply:

"It's art."

Got My Mind Set on You

2008-06-17T07:40:00.000-04:00

I haven't had a new cell phone in...well, ever, actually. The one I use now is a cast-off of MLW's, who long ago left the realm of ordinary mobiles for the greener pastures of smartphones.

I was tempted to snag an iPhone when they first came out, but I was a little hesitant to pick one up because of AT&T's rather plodding network and I really didn't want to have to sacrifice one of my limbs in order to procure one.

Now the arbiter of geek chic has announced that both of my reasons for hesitation have been eliminated. So, I've been socking away money in the form of Apple gift cards, the new device is going to be released around my next birthday, and I soooooo want this.

Unfortunately, I'll be out of state on the day the phone is released, and Apple is now strongly pushing for in-store activation. Any of my intelligent readers know if it's possible to get a new number in your home area code regardless of where you're making your purchase?

The 39 Lashes

2008-05-15T00:26:00.000-04:00

So, I had a bit of what turned out to be a mental health scare a few weeks ago.

First though, a confession: I had been struggling with cigarette smoking, and had been indulging in them at work (this is the "lashes" part of the entry). I was fully conscious of the health risks that came along with my inability to remain nicotine-free, but this was an addiction that I just couldn't seem to quit. Finally, my shame at what I was doing, the fact that I had to keep it a secret and the thought that, were I to shuffle off the mortal coil at this point I'd be leaving behind both MLW and the mini-BG was enough to strengthen my resolve. So, I decided that enough was enough and went cold turkey.

Some days later, I started feeling like I had a lump of mucus in my throat. Nothing that interfered with eating or was anything other than an annoyance, but when it persisted for a few days, I began to think it might be serious. Then I started to obsess about it. What if it was something serious? What if I was developing thyroid cancer? Or, even better, esophogeal cancer? I was so focused on it that I had trouble sleeping. Eventually, I stumbled across a definition for Globus, which fit what I was feeling exactly. So I relaxed a bit.

A few nights later, I woke up around 3 o'clock in the morning with a slight pain in my chest and some tingling in my left arm. Since I generally sleep on that side, I thought it was possible that I'd simply cut off circulation to my arm. But I was also thinking of my step-father, who had heart problems last fall. So after about a half hour of waiting, I woke up MLW and told her that I was taking myself to the hospital.

In case anyone was wondering, waiting in an emergency room still sucks. There were only about four people there when I showed up, and I may have been the only one who wasn't under the influence of some substance or other. Yet I still had to sit there for a good half an hour to forty-five minutes. I should have realized that this was a sign in and of itself: if I were really having a heart attack, I probably would have been taken right away. At least, I hope that would have been the case.

So some three and a half hours and an EKG, blood test and X-ray later, the doc on duty said that it didn't look like I was having any heart difficulty. And although he recommended that I check myself in for observation, I went home. I tried to sleep, but I was still very anxious. I called our family doctor as soon as their office opened and scheduled an appointment for that afternoon.

Our doc listened to my tale, ordered another EKG (still negative) and another blood test. He also wrote a prescription for me to get a stress test at the local hospital (who knew you had to get a prescription for a test?) and, when I told him about my throat, an upper gastrointestinal workup. I also told him that I thought that anxiety could possibly be contributing to my symptoms. He asked if I wanted anti-anxiety medication, but I told him that I was so exhausted that I didn't think I would have any problems sleeping.

It didn't take me long to call and tell him I had changed my mind.

I was able to schedule my upper GI before the stress test, and it came back clean. So, no esophageal cancer. However, the test had revealed something in one of my kidneys. At this point, I was pretty sure my ticker was in fine shape, and I ended up canceling the stress test. And I stopped obsessing about my esophagus. But now I started to worry about my kidney. Once again I was looking up symptoms on WebMD, finding out the warning signs for kidney cancer, its different stages, survival statistics and the like. I also called my doc's office for another appointment, this time for another blood test to check my creatinine levels and a urinalysis to check for blood.

Long story short, everything came back normal. What I'd not seen or heard (or possibly not wanted to see or hear in my anxiety-ruled state) was that the doctor who performed the upper GI had already made a preliminary diagnosis: renal calculus. Or, as it's more commonly known, kidney stones.

So there's nothing physically wrong with me, although I may be in one hell of a lot of pain in the next few months.

In addition to resolving to finally do something about my weight, something that I've put off doing consistently for a few years now, I've been thinking about what caused me to drop into this spiral of the worst-case scenario. Why did I immediately convince myself that I was likely in serious trouble? And, as MLW pointed out, how the hell am I going to cope when I do have a serious illness? I've got a (cute as all get-out) 3-year-old that needs me to be around and needs me to be able to keep my shiznit together.

That's kind of where I'm at right now. I'm trying to eat a bit more healthy (or at least not quite so crappily) and exercise a bit more regularly. It ain't easy, though; my body isn't terribly thrilled about giving up fatty red meat in favor of rowing my way to a slimmer me. But I've got 20 pounds to lose, and it's not going to get up and move out on it's own.

One last note of interest: my brain was actually able to manifest symptoms for whatever ailment I thought I might be suffering. When I was worried about heart trouble, my chest hurt; when I thought I might have kidney trouble, my sides hurt. When I knew there was nothing wrong with me, my pains just miraculously went away.

Oh, and in case you're wondering about the other part of this entry's title, I'm currently 39.

My next bit will be somewhat more humorous and will contain dick jokes.

The Midnight Trail

2008-03-29T09:04:00.005-04:00

Another concert remembrance from 20 years ago, this time regarding everyone's favorite German electronic act.

Tangerine Dream
September 7, 1988, at Radio City Music Hall.

Going away to college greatly expanded the boundaries of my musical taste beyond the steady diet of rock & roll I'd grown up on in the suburbs. I was already a fan of the world of music, but I had no idea just how expansive that world was until I began bumping up against people whose tastes were distinctly different from my own. It was at college that I really began to delve into jazz, rap, folk, punk, and--most significantly--electronica and ambient. My entrance into these last two categories, which now dominate my musical preferences above all the others, is due solely to my exposure to Tangerine Dream.

I can still remember the pivotal event in late 1986/early 1987 that set me down the path. My friend John and I were in the basement of the dormitory, playing a game of some sort, waiting for our laundry. John had brought down his portable cassette player. John was a big fan of instrumental music, and had even made his own mixed tape of non-vocal bits from such acts as Van Halen and Prince. His girlfriend back home, who knew that he liked that sort of stuff, had recorded Phaedra on one side of a cassette and Tangram on the other, and that's what we were listening to.

As the cassette played, I became more and more fascinated with what I was hearing. I had not heard anything like it in the entirety of my young life, and the more I heard, the greater my interest became. Over the course of the next few months, I raided the local records shops for as many cut-out albums as I could find, and managed to pick up the vast majority of their catalog.

I remember that Tyger was the first album of theirs I bought upon its release--on CD, no less! While devouring the liner notes of the album as I listened to it for the first time (a mixed bag, by the way, on account of the vocals), I noticed an address for an international fan club. One membership fee later, I was fan #320 in the band's first official club in its history. In the days before the instant availability of the 'net, the occasional fan club newsletters were an informational lifeline. It was through that vehicle that I learned about the the band's next two albums (Live Miles and Optical Race), and that there would be a US tour behind the latter! Bliss!

The membership also paid dividends in other ways. A couple days before the show, I get a call up in my room that there's a visitor waiting for me in the lobby of my dorm. Confused, I go down to find a guy who had travelled to NYC from the Netherlands (IIRC) to see the show, had kept my address from the club listing, and wanted to know if I wanted to grab a beer? Wacky. While we were at the bar, he made me a proposition: he was going to be taping the show, so if I bought him a couple brews he'd send me a copy. Done...and done. Over those drinks, I got to hear some of the history of the band from someone whose knowledge far surpassed my own, got some info on past members whose music was worth checking out, and got just a taste of how dedicated some TD fans could be.

What am I forgetting? Oh yeah, the concert!

By the late 80s, TD had largely forgone the long improvisations that had made their 70s concerts legendary. I neither knew this (their boots were pretty tough to come by at that point) nor do I think I would have cared all that much had I known. They played a fair amount of material that hadn't yet been released along with plenty of their recent material and a smattering of "classics" that had been somewhat retooled (little did I know what a thing that would become). We had pretty decent seats, and by the time the encores came around, we hopscotched far enough up that we were within 20 rows of the stage. An absolute blast. Of course, I bought a t-shirt.

The only bummer was the after concert. As a fan club member, I was supposedly going to be able to get backstage. Due to some snafu, this didn't happen. You can be sure that I contacted the club, like only a 20-year-old who feels slighted can do. I'm sure I'd be embarrassed were I able to see it now.

And that gent from the Netherlands? He was as good as his word. A month or so after the show, I got a package with two cassettes inside. I probably still have them somewhere.

Half-awake in a Fake Empire

2008-03-12T20:50:00.000-04:00

And now for the "rock" half of my top ten list, numbers 5 through 1.

#5: Ween - La Cucaracha. This was one of those albums where a single song ensured it a spot on the list. In this case it was the epic "Woman and Man," which includes a brain-melting guitar solo that goes on for somewhere in the neighborhood of half of the song's 10-minute running time. Pure wankery genius.

#4: Arcade Fire - Neon Bible. I placed Arcade Fire's debut album in my top ten when it came out, and in retrospect I think I may have fallen a bit hard for the band's hype. This album is substantially better--it feels just as anthemic, but more focused and, if I do say so, a bit Springsteenian.

#3: M.I.A. - Kala. Another second album that runs contrary to the idea of the sophmore slump. Production is noticably improved from her debut, and the number of musical references has increased exponentionally. "Paper Planes" was built on The Clash's "Straight to Hell," referenced Wrecks 'n' Effect's "Rump Shaker" and used gunshots and a cash register to punctuate a ditty written in the persona of the most horrible immigrant imaginable. Probably my single of the year.

#2: Radiohead - In Rainbows. Does anything else need to be said about this album at this point?

#1: The National - Boxer. This has to be one of the most under-appreciated albums ever to appear on about a bazillion top ten lists. It's #10 on the Village Voice list, yet not one word is wasted on it. Over at Idolator, the person responsible for commenting on the lists (sort of like the Christgau of the Village Voice, if Christgau was actually still at the Voice) noted that he would have preferred actual wallpaper to the album. This for something that came in at #7.

Why the indifference? My guess is that it's because of the fact that it's an album that you actually need to pay attention to in order to appreciate it. Unlike most of the other stuff that comprised top ten lists the world over (and the albums listed directly above this one), Boxer does not kick you in the genitals and demand you listen. Instead, it's all about subtlety: complex rhythms that don't announce themselves, an intentionally diminished dynamic range, and a singer who sounds like a random mutation from the genetic material of Leonard Cohen and Nick Cave.

There are also lyrical nuggets liberally spread all over the place. Taking a page from my buddy-in-blogging, I'll note that The National were also responsible for my lyric of the year, from the song "Mistaken for Strangers:"

You get mistaken for strangers by your own friends
As you pass in the night under the silvery Citibank lights
Arm in arm in arm and eyes and eyes glazing under
Oh you wouldn't want an angel watching over?
Surprise, surprise, they wouldn't wanna watch
Another un-innocent, elegant fall into the un-magnificent life of adults

It's most definitely a grower, and the more I listened to it, the more I liked it. Obviously, it isn't for everyone.

And there are absolutely no gunshots.

Intension and Objective

2008-03-01T21:08:00.008-05:00

I know both of you out there have been waiting since the calendar flipped over to aught-eight for my list of the top ten albums from last year, and I hate to disappoint.

This time around, I went about my list making a bit differently. Instead of a hodge-podge of musical genres touching each other and potentially mixing together (can't have that!), I broke down my list into two discrete halves: ambient and...non-ambient.

Admittedly, this was done partially for the novelty of being able to do it. But there was also a pretty small pool of 2007 albums to choose from in House Beach Ghost, and considering the fact that ambient makes up a significant portion of my musical purchases, the ratio of ambient:everything else in my list is pretty indicative of my genre preferences.

In any event, here's the ambient half. It probably doesn't need to be said, but none of the albums listed below would be eligible for the hardcore seal of approval.

#10: Pete Namlook & Tetsu Inoue - 2350 Broadway 4

#9: Robin Guthrie & Harold Budd - After the Night Falls / Before the Day Breaks. Released separately, but I'm counting them as one entry since they're thematically linked. BTW, a Bronx cheer to Darla Records for not only releasing these as separate CDs, but for also stating in their marketing copy that these two albums "...are not ambient." Yeah, actually, they are.

#8: Steve Roach - Arc of Passion.

#7: Stars of the Lid - And Their Refinement of the Decline.

#6: Patrick O'Hearn - Glaciation.

Riddle Song

2008-02-21T20:49:00.001-05:00

If you've ever seen the movie Animal House (and good lord, is there anyone under the age of 5 who hasn't?), you're probably familiar with the iconic scene where some earnest folkie is serenading some ladies on the steps of the Delta House during the toga party, when Bluto takes his guitar from his hands, smashes it to bits, then hands the remnants back to the stunned folkie with a demure "sorry."

I had always assumed, based on the few lines that actually appear in the movie, that the song had been made up by the film's writers. So imagine my surprise when, while listening to yet another one of the mini-BG's CDs, I hear those familiar words and discover, to my horror, that the pain doesn't end there. Here are the lyrics in their entirety:

I gave my love a cherry that had no stone
I gave my love a chicken that had no bone
I gave my love a story that had no end
I gave my love a baby with no crying

How can there be a cherry that has no stone?
How can there be a chicken that has no bone?
How can there be a story that has no end?
How can there be a baby with no crying?

A cherry when it's blooming it has no stone
A chicken in the shell it has no bone
The story of how I love you it has no end
A baby when it's sleeping it's not crying

So the first question that immediately popped into my head was "Why in the world would anyone want to sing this song?" I mean, those lyrics are so insipid they make Vanilla Ice sound like Mark Eitzel in comparison.

Coming rapidly on the heels of that thought, however, was this one: Even if it were possible that the song was performed by oh-so-serious young men and women in an attempt to woo whoever the hell it was they were desperately aching to boink back in the day, how can you now, 30 years after Animal House was released, perform that song in anything other than an ironic fashion?

My first, and prevaling, theory is that these folks have absolutely no idea that the song has been reduced to a half-minute joke and there's nothing ironic about their performance whatsoever. They are those earnest folkies from back in the 60s (or their descendants), and they really, truly believe in the beauty of this particular tripe.

My second, tin-foil-hat theory is that they're trying to re-introduce the song by targeting today's toddlers in the hopes that some day, maybe 20 years hence, a new breed of earnest folkies will once again woo their potential one-night-stands with those timeless words. (As they cruise on their hoverboards, wearing the latest temporary-tattoo clothing and fighting off zombies with their gravitron phasers).

One thing I do know: if I hear the beach ghostlette start cooing those lyrics while strumming on an acoustic (or plucking her recently acquired mbira--and no, I'm not kidding), I'm going to laugh at her. I've already set aside some spare cash to pay for the therapy.

Everything Falls Apart

2008-02-03T10:10:00.000-05:00

A brief consumer report for those of you who prefer to get their sneakers on the cheap: stay away from Target's Pro Spirit brand.

I love sneakers. They're my default footwear except when I'm at work, when it's too hot or it's snowing. However, I hate trying on shoes, since there's generally some size variation between manufacturers. So when I find a brand, I tend to stick to it. Ten years ago or so it was Reebok, but nowadays I'm pretty much a New Balance guy. This is due in no small part to the fact that they have a factory store in Brookline, Mass, where I happen to have family. So every time we're in Beantown, I make a point to go the store, pick up a few pairs of sneaks at a considerable discount, and I'm generally good for a couple years.

Last year, my last pair of NBs got tossed after the Great Crapalanche of '07 (which I don't believe I've blogged about--feel free to thank me). This was not something that I could live with for long, lest I start wearing out dress shoes walking to and from work. The mini-BG and I were truckin' through Target, probably on a wipe-related errand, when I wandered into the shoe section. And there they were...bargain sneakers. And they had pairs for less than $20! Score! So, I tried on a few pairs and found one that fit well. What I didn't know was that, in this case, cheap was synonymous with disposable.

Around two weeks after buying the sneakers, I was lacing up when the laces on one shoe ripped through the eyelets. Some emergency repair work kept them usable, but it was just a harbinger of the what was to come.

Shortly after the eyelets ripped, the heel on the other shoe began to collapse, which turned out to be because the heel support was comprised of a lattice of cardboard. Then, the pieces of clear plastic embedded in the heels (whose purpose was, evidently, purely decorative) began popping out. And then the top and sole of the sneakers began to separate. That was enough. The next time the family went out shopping, I cracked open the wallet and spent the dosh on a decent pair of New Balance sneakers. Over a month later, and they're holding up well, thank you very much.

By the way, if any of you want an alternative to simply throwing out your old sneaks, they can be recycled. If your town doesn't offer special household waste recycling days, Nike has a program where you can drop them off at one of their stores and even mail them in. So don't just throw 'em out!

Tunnel of Love

2008-01-25T07:04:00.000-05:00

More words for your enjoyment repurposed from Rate Your Music. This time, I reminisce about a couple of concerts I attended almost 20 years ago. Enjoy!

Bruce Springsteen
May 16 & 19, 1988, at Madison Square Garden.

These two shows are without a doubt the most radically different, from a purely experiential perspective, that I've ever attended. But first, a digression...

Even though I was raised in Jersey, I had somehow managed to completely miss out on the vast majority of Bruce's catalog up until the year 1984. Back then, it was impossible to be a school-age teen in the Garden State and not know who The Boss was--if your peers weren't listening to him, chances were good that he'd be featured in the local media at some point. I remember our local rag covering the opening of the Continental Airlines Arena, which was a pretty big deal at the time. Bruce, of course, was the first artist to perform there (he was supporting The River at the time).

My ignorance of all things Bruce ended one summer when I accompanied my family to a company picnic. It was a pretty large affair (or perhaps I'm remembering it as such) in a field in New Brunswick. All of the teens who attended were given their choice of a free cassette: Thriller, Born in the U.S.A. and some other Columbia artist. I hadn't yet (grudgingly) accepted MJ's musical genius, so I went with the Boss. It didn't take me long to get drawn in to the music, and I soon became a convert. Later, I would actually start paying attention to what Bruce was singing, and my interest in him as an artist would grow exponentially.

So, of course, I subsequently miss what is probably one of the most storied concert tours of the 80s (at least from a Jersey standpoint), when Bruce played stadiums for the next year (two years?). Born in the U.S.A. tour t-shirts were ubiquitous at my high school. For some reason, I didn't go. Maybe I wasn't a full-blown fan at that point, maybe I couldn't get tickets, maybe I just decided it wasn't something I needed to see. Obviously, this was a mistake that I would have to rectify at my earliest opportunity.

That opportunity didn't arrive until I was at college. Bruce was supporting his Tunnel of Love album, and was scheduled for a stand at Madison Square Garden. Now, this was a time before some of you whipper-snappers might remember, where if you wanted to buy a ticket you had to pick up a telephone or perhaps even present yourself at a physical location that specialized in the sale of tickets! None of this clickety-clickety-purchase nonsense! So there I was, the morning tickets went on sale, dialing and dialing and dialing (back in the Dark Ages, there was also no such thing as automatic redialing; if you wanted to retry the number, you pressed every single one of the digits again) and getting nothing but a busy tone. By the time I finally got through (if I even did) the entire run had sold out.

Well, I thought to myself, fuck that; there was no way that I wasn't getting a ticket. Luckily, there were alternate means of procuring them: I simply located a copy of the local phone book and found the number of a "ticket reseller." And procure I did, to the tune of around $100. To put that number into perspective, the face price of the ticket was $22.50, so I paid more than four times what the ticket was worth.

Now, you'll recall that this was in the dark ages before the Internet, so the only way you could tell where you'd be sitting was to look at a seating chart in the same phone books that you used to buy your illegally marked-up tickets (coincidence?) and approximate. Unless you were really familiar with the venue, you'd not be able to match your row number to your actual position.

I think you may be able to guess where this is headed: the seat was terrible. Literally at the very side of the stage and all the way up, positioned precisely so the majority of the speakers were facing elsewhere. Most of the show I got to see the side of Bruce's head as he addressed the audience in front of him. But for the most part, it didn't matter. I was thrilled to be there, even if I didn't have the level of familiarity with his work that I would in later years and wasn't able to readily identify what was being played.

I find out soon after that I was not the only Springsteen fan at my college. Turns out, the girlfriend of one of my buddies was an absolute Boss freak and when she found out when tickets when on sale she got on line, got a wristband and was one of the first ten people to get tickets. Good for her, right? No, good for me, 'cuz they had an extra ticket that they'd be willing to sell. My first question, thinking about how much I'd just blown on my other ticket, was "How much?" Ticket price, I was informed. And where were the seats? Eighth row.

I think you can guess what my answer was. Needless to say, it was one hell of a more enjoyable concert than my first experience. Musically, I believe it wasn't all too different than the one I'd seen a few days prior, but it sure as hell sounded better, and it was nice to be able to see the faces of the people performing the music. In fact, I'm relatively sure that Nils Lofgren pointed at me and asked (by way of pointing at his instrument and then at this ear) if his guitar was sufficiently audible.

I told him to turn it up.

Get Ready to Wiggle

2008-01-19T08:28:00.000-05:00

I'm not quite certain how I managed to pull this off, but I somehow managed to avoid contracting the flu that had afflicted MLW and the mini-BG. After my last post, our nanny also came down with the bug, so it's not like it wasn't contagious. I did have some persistent indigestion in the form of gas for a couple days, but that was the extent of anything untoward.

Mind you, me being the only person in the household not coming down with an illness never happens. MLW has an immune system like a...like a...well, something both healthy and sexy. So I'm counting myself extremely lucky.

In other news on the family front, the beach ghostlette has been going through an interesting stage the past few days of requesting that I adopt the persona of "Daddy Wiggle." This despite the fact that she really doesn't watch the Wiggles much anymore (although she did ask if she could see them in person this week). So in order to adopt this persona, all I have to do is attempt an Australian accent (which, while pretty bad to begin with, usually slips into an even worse attempts at Cockney) throw in the occasional "beauty, mate," and add the word "wiggle" to pretty much every noun in existence: wiggle toddler, wiggle cat, wiggle bet, and so on, ad infinitum.

What's particularly interesting about this phenomenon is that she's being much more reasonable about everyday requests when Daddy Wiggle makes them. Usually, dinnertime is a series of unending (and increasingly forceful) reminders about eating the food in her bowl. However, Daddy Wiggle only needs make these requests once.

So, the way I figure it, this is because she either:

--Likes the Wiggles
--Likes Australians
--Prefers Daddy Wiggle to my actual personality
--Wants to make certain her father keeps his role-playing chops up to par
--Is preparing for her own entry into the gaming world

Alternate theories being accepted in the comments.

The Sword of Damocles is Hanging Over My Head

2008-01-08T07:22:00.001-05:00

The new year has not gotten off to a healthy start here in house beach ghost. Both the mini-BG and I came down with head colds immediately after Christmas, and I'm still somewhat congested a couple weeks later (by the way, there's nothing quite like waking up in the morning and coughing up a semi-hard lump of dark green phlegm. Yum!).

Then, the mini-BG woke up around 2 in the morning on Sunday night/Monday morning complaining that she was not feeling well. After injesting about .01ml of Children's Tylenol, she began vomiting, a process that she would repeat throughout the night at approximately every hour and a half. MLW began feeling nauseated yesterday morning, and felt so bad by the time she got home that she went directly to bed and has barely left it since. The beach ghostlette is still not 100%, but after a day of eating very little and drinking her own weight in fluids, she's probably over the worst part. Hopefully MLW will also be improved by the time I get home.

But I have a hunch that I'm going to be spending some quality time with the plumbing by the time the week is out. I'll let you all know what color things turn out.

And to All a Good Night

2007-12-22T08:32:00.000-05:00

We interrupt the frequent publishing schedule of this blog to bring you the Christmas holiday.

Happy holidays all!

One for the Books

2007-12-08T15:29:00.000-05:00

With our nanny enjoying a two-week vacation and MLW away on business, this turned out to be a historic week. Since I had precious little vacation time remaining, I needed to juggle daytime care for the beach ghostlette, and this was accomplished via assistance from a vast number of family members.

However, this past Friday I had to do something that neither MLW or I had ever had to do before--put the beach ghostlette in day care. So what, right? Well, the little one is now 3, and has never had the day care experience before. More importantly, neither have her parents.

So, I leave the house with the toddler (late, of course) and walk down to the waterfront where the center is. We get in and there are three women and about four kids who are already there. We had been telling the little one that she was going to "pre pre-school," so her initial reaction we entered was to walk around and take a look at everything. Although she appeared a bit tentative, her expression seemed to indicate that "hey, this ain't so bad."

I stayed with her for about 10 minutes, getting all her stuff put away, leaving instructions for the aides, helping the little one use the toilet, what have you. Just before I left I gave some dried cranberries and waved goodbye, watching as she sat at the table and munched on her snack. I realized I had forgotten my bag about a minute later (paging Dr. Freud), but when I looked at her again she was still chewing away, looking as if she hadn't yet decided whether this was all a good or bad thing. I could have watched her for another hour, but I was already late for work, and I knew me standing there wasn't going to helpful.

My mother-in-law picked her up shortly after noon and reported that the mini-BG had been on her best behavior and had enjoyed herself immensely. I'd not really doubted it, since she has already been establishing her independence.

But I've got to admit, that somewhere deep, deep down--perhaps only a little bit--my heart was breaking.

Surfacing

2007-11-12T06:28:00.000-05:00

Ding, dong, the New Beast is dead. Well, okay, not dead, but delivered. Under word count slightly, but on time. This project was without question the most difficult one I've ever undertaken. So much so, in fact, that I don't think I'll ever work on one like it again. I'd not realized at the start that the process would be quite so painstaking, and that having to remain stringently faithful to the setting on which the game was based would prove so difficult. But it was.

Truth be told, it would not have been possible to finish on time with a manuscript that was even vaguely coherent if it weren't for the willingness of MLW to make time for me to write. If I were to calculate an hourly rate for the work that I generated over the life of this particular project, I'd probably weep. MLW has always allowed me plenty of space to devote to this hobby, oftentime to the detriment of her work life and our home life. This time, I'm not proud to say I demanded more from her than was fair. And although I've said as much in private, I think a "public" statement is also in order: Thank you, honey--I'm sorry.

Almost two weeks after I sent in my piece of the puzzle, I still feel like I'm slowly emerging from the morass of the last few months. A gradual re-awakening, if you will, made more ironic presently because of the fact that I'm so, so tired.

Busy Prepositions

2007-09-25T06:53:00.000-04:00

Hey, I remember you!

My apologies, dear blog, but much of my non-work life has been consumed by work on the New Beast, which is living up to its name. There's been plenty of topics I could blather on about within your nifty little interface, but precious little time to do them justice. Or, well, string together a few sentences in a random, occasionally coherent fashion, as is the usual style with my posts.

But I've not abandoned you entirely, dear blog. Just almost entirely. Forecast calls for a "return to normal" sometime in November.

Home at Last

2007-08-09T06:09:00.000-04:00

MLW, the mini-BG and I spent Sunday at my mom and stepfather's (in a potty-training test of wills, but that's a post for another time) and then I stayed the night while the wife and child went back home.

After being transferred, the expectation was that my stepfather would be going under the knife early on Monday afternoon. When Monday morning rolled around, this time got pushed to later on Monday afternoon--and then he was pushed to Tuesday. Turns out an emergency case had come in, which had to take precedence. While completely understandable, the patient was getting a wee bit antsy. In a classy move, the hospital gave him and my mom a special dinner for two: surf 'n' turf. Unbelievably, some hospitals have recognized that their food service was, if you can imagine it, not quite yummy, and have even more incredibly decided to actually upgrade their culinary experience.

So Tuesday rolls around, he's dosed up on morphine and taken into surgery, while my mother, aunt, uncle and I get to...wait. And wait. And wait.

The operation was, from what the surgeon described, pretty much textbook. They needed to do four bypasses, but they had no issues harvesting the veins or attaching them. When we were brought in to see him, I pretty much knew what to expect, having had to watch the mini-BG go through it. He actually looked better than she did, partly because he was almost completely covered by blankets. He was intubated, and had a number of IV leads and a tube in his chest to drain fluid, but he looked pretty darn good, all things considered. The nurses still had some work to do on him, so we left the hospital and I went home. When I got there, it felt like I had been away forever.

Yesterday, he regained consciousness and they removed some of the leads and tubes, including the one down his throat. He was, as we expected, cranky as hell, and stated flat out that he wanted no visitors for the next day or so in order to get more sleep. He has stated his intention to be home by Saturday--more power to him.

The kicker to this entire experience was the fact that my stepdad had a pretty low risk factor for heart problems: his cholesterol was low and he had regular stress tests and EKGs. What he also had, as my mother discovered, was a family history of heart trouble. Had he not been smart and gone to the hospital when he first start having chest pains, the outcome of this ordeal would have been much worse.

Doctor Doctor, Gimme the News

2007-08-04T07:47:00.000-04:00

So it's going to be bypass surgery. He's going to be moved to a nearby hospital known for their excellence in heart care and more than likely have the surgery Monday or Tuesday.

Went out for a visit last night and he was up and walking around. Now it's down to waiting once again.

I Wish I Wasn't Flesh & Blood / I Would Not Be Scared

2007-08-02T22:31:00.000-04:00

I'm pretty certain that I must get my inability to disguise my emotional state from my mother, because I could tell something was wrong before she had even spoken 10 words on the phone.

Turns out, my stepfather had awoken early in the morning with chest pains. By the time she called, they had already been at the hospital for several hours. An initial stress test wasn't totally enlightening, but neither were the signs that encouraging.

As the day progressed, some of the holes were filled in. He'd not had a heart attack, but there was definitely an obstruction of some sort. Tomorrow morning he'll be undergoing a coronary angiogram to find out the precise extent of the blockage. Remediation could range from a stent to a full-blown bypass. Frankly, neither option enthralls me, but then again I'm sure he's not looking forward to it either.

I got to speak to him later in the day, and he seemed in fine spirits. My mother told me not to bother driving out, as there was not much to do but wait. But waiting is very, very difficult.

More when there's more to report.

Slow Show

2007-07-26T06:58:00.000-04:00

So, a few weeks ago I began working on a new writing project, the exact nature of which, as with other projects I've mentioned here, I'll be keeping under wraps at present. I'll also continue to refer to the project as a beast (or more specifically, a Beast), but I think naming projects after Frankenstein movies is growing a little thin--or at least it seems that way, since I've not actually taken any time to look up any more names. Please feel free to list them in the comments!

After discarding a few options -- okay, after discarding one option (Beast 2.0, which seemed too Web-trendy) -- I've settled on The New Beast.

It's a bit marketing heavy, like I'd reformulated Coke or something -- okay, it's pretty much exactly like New Coke, isn't it? Perhaps I need to go back to the drawing board on this one.

In any case, The New Beast is a dream project for me in many respects, particularly since it's based on a property that I already enjoy immensely (and which will hopefully be getting a lot more exposure in a few years). However, it does present challenges that I've not had to deal with on past projects. Namely, the world in which I'm writing is already well-detailed, and I'm not really adding new material so much as collecting it from different places and presenting it thematically. It seems somewhat akin to taking pieces from different jigsaw puzzles and making a new picture from them. So there's a lot of research and precision involved, and combined with the fact that I'm a slow writer on the best of days has made this particular project particularly challenging.

Still, I'm making good progress thus far and I'm quite amped for this to see this publication. And while I had intended this post to convey a "yup, haven't really been updating the 'blog much, don't expect it to change and here's why" message, it would appear that I've alreday contradicted it.

Next: More about music!

East Side, West Side, Everybody's Coming Down

2007-07-14T07:54:00.000-04:00

I can now report--with no small measure of pride--that the beach ghostlette is able to sing the entire first verse of "Meet the Mets."

Complaints from Yankees fans can be submitted in the comments field.

Waterfalls

2007-06-27T07:56:00.000-04:00

So, a couple weeks ago I was interviewing people for a position at my company. As I was headed to the lobby I stopped at the bathroom so I could double-check that I was somewhat presentable (a challenge on most days).

I leaned over the sink to take make certain that there was no detritus hanging out of my beard...

...and promptly got water directly on the crotch of my pants. Khaki pants, naturally. Y'know, the kind that best displays water.

Now, I could have made the candidate wait a few extra minutes while I applied paper towels to my groin (which itself might have raised a few eyebrows), but I chose expediency over potential embarrassment. To her credit, the woman interviewing didn't mention it.

Trouble

2007-03-19T08:16:00.000-04:00

My increasingly infrequent posts seem to be adopting a practically Seinfeldian tone of late ("Hey, d'ya ever notice..."). Eventually I'll be able to get back to full-on blather mode, but Work / Child / Other has dropped posting pretty far down on the list of things to do.

So, for now, another anecdote of bite-size length:

Last week, the mini-Beach Ghost was sitting in her high chair, playing contentedly with a few amorphous blobs of Play-Doh. Since I'd just gotten home, I was on my way upstairs to get into casual clothes. Here's the exchange that followed:

Me: "Daddy has to go upstairs to get changed. Do you want to come with me?"

Mini-BG: "No."

Me (two seconds later): "How 'bout now?"

Mini-BG (immediately): "How 'bout no?"

Yup, the wife and I are in for a world of hurt 10 years from now.

Lost

2007-02-02T07:14:00.000-05:00

So I updated the 'blog to the new Blogger platform yesterday, which included updating the template to the new "drag & drop" interface.

Of course, updating the template resulted in the removal to all the customization I'd done to the HTML. So...goodbye sidebar links and goodbye to the Haloscan comments.

=Sigh=

On the plus side, it'll give me a chance to weed through some of the less vital links (there were kind of a lot of them). And the new dropdown option to access the archive is a definite plus.

Well, off to it.

Language is a Virus from Outer Space

2006-12-20T12:11:00.000-05:00

I noted with interest a new commercial by one of the coffee illuminati corporations that slams one of their unnamed competitors for requiring customers to order drinks in "Fritalian."

The advantage of ordering that specialty drink at Dunkin' Donuts? "You order them in English. Not Fritalian."

And the name of that wonderful concoction you can order in English? Latte.

Here it is, for your enjoyment. Another highlight: "Ignorant American" subtext.

It's Human Nature

2006-11-11T22:29:00.000-05:00

The Beach Ghostlette turned two last week, and we threw a combination birthday/costume party on Halloween to celebrate. A plethora of adorable children attended, turning our place into a chaotic whirlwind (and reminding me in the process why I'm very happy with just the one child, thangyewverymuch).

Of the gifts that the little miss received, of particular interest to her was a tea party set. We took it out of the box after we had finished trick or treating, and she immediately began to serve tea to MLW and I.

Not very interesting in and of itself...except for the fact that MLW and I drink tea very rarely and have never had a tea party to the best of my knowledge (in my wilder days...but that's a story for another time).

So it seems obvious to me that this was not learned behavior; that this stereotypically female behavior was hardwired into her brain from the moment her neurons started to fire. It's pretty amazing, that genetics just kick in when the proper stimuli present themselves.

But it's also a bit scary. What other stuff is lying dormant in there? Will she decide that she'd rather talk on the phone than work on math and science? Will she believe that her gender makes her the "weaker sex?" Will she be a "shopaholic?"

I'd like to think that some of my "maleness" will rub off (or at least that she won't grow up to be a Braves fan), even if I don't exactly overflow with machismo. If she can at least grok how I think and what I enjoy, perhaps she'll be better prepared when she steps out into a world dominated by men.

I can hope.

BTW, a tip of the hat to the staff of the Wrong Turn Journal for providing the gift. Obviously one of the more memorable ones. ;)

The Magnificent Void

2006-11-09T08:08:00.000-05:00

Seen on my way to work the other day:

Anarchy? You bet!
And organized too!

NY3

2006-10-24T07:21:00.000-04:00

Not sure how to categorize this particular post. Perhaps "Random Crap That Shuffles Through My Brain" or perhaps "You've Heard it Before, But Becoming a Parent Changes Your Perspective." In any event...

I was recently listening to the remastered version of Robert Fripp's Exposure (which is quite good, by the way) when I came to the track "NY3." The piece features some of Fripp's patented fret complexities over a field recording he made in his Hell's Kitchen apartment during the time he lived in NYC. It's a Mother and Father (or so they've been indentified in the liners) arguing with their pregnant Daughter. At one point, the Mother yells:

You don't know whether it's a nigger or a spic or a white baby
You've got to go for an abortion baby
I never had to

In his notes about the remastering, Fripp states:

"I was told by my landlord, several years later, that the family arguments downstairs continued after the pregnant daughter became a mother."

The recording was made in the summer of '78, so the pregnant daughter probably gave birth no later than '79. This would make the child around 27 years old now. And I couldn't help but wonder how that kid's life has turned out. Has it been as awful as one might expect? Does he or she know that there's a recording of his mother and grandparents going toe to toe that's been heard by thousands of people? Has he or she been able to forgive them?

I Lost on Jeopardy

2006-10-13T23:40:00.000-04:00

So last weekend I got to attend a taping of Celebrity Jeopardy at Radio City Music Hall. I watch the show pretty faithfully (for my daughter's sake, of course--it's educational), so I was pretty happy when my stepfather-in-law informed us that he'd gotten tickets.

I don't claim to be an expert at how game shows are taped, but I'm fairly certain that this was a pretty big audience. Then again, Wheel of Fortune (or, as I like to think of it, anti-Jeopardy) doesn't seem to have any problem filling stadiums with folks who find its =ahem= simplicity enjoyable.

About half an hour after people found their seats, Johnny Gilbert, the show's announcer, gave us the rundown: a rehearsal with the stars (except Alex), then live to tape. Our stars this time 'round were: Steve Schirripa, Miguel Ferrer and...Harry Smith. Once that was done, they waited a few minutes to get set and then it was game time.

What was most interesting about the taping was the fact that it unfolds pretty much as you see it on the tube. During the breaks, Trebeck would take questions from the audience (His most embarrassing moment? Accidentally giving away the "question."), and there was only one instance where they had to reshoot (Mr. Smith evidently had some problems staying put on his mark) so the whole shebang was done in less than an hour.

Some other random bits:

--One of the audience members asked Mr. Gilbert whether the answers were less difficult for celebrities. He replied with some hoo-ha that it's tough to get stars to come on the show and how they don't want to look foolish and blah blah blah. So the simple answer: yes. And while I wouldn't deign to assess the intelligence of that evening's contestants based on their peformance, let me put it this way: they didn't get through all the questions in either round.

--The closest I got to a celebrity was walking past a member of the Clue Crew, who I later saw help a disabled woman out of the hall. Give that woman a raise!

--Curiously, the sound out to the audience was spotty. Guess they only had so many monitors to point out at the seats.

--Since I was seated far stage right, I couldn't actually see the board. Luckily, they had video screens the size of trucks strung from the ceiling.

--Y'know the music that they play over the credits? That song is actually about three or four minutes long. It's hard to keep keep clapping for that long.

Who won? You'll just have to wait until November to find out.

While You Were Out

2006-09-26T07:27:00.000-04:00

It's been quiet...too quiet.

There's not been a lot of news to report--or at least I haven't felt the need to expound on any particular topic, personally newsworthy or not. MLW is back in a full-time job, one that, so far at least, seems pretty enjoyable. Everything has been on a generally even keel and I've been pretty much unmotivated to write at home.

As is often the case, I have ideas for stuff I'd like to do (heck, I've got an almost complete rough draft lying about somewhere), but no deadline forcing me to do it. No kick in the literary ass, so to speak.

This is, admittedly, a pretty darn thin start.

Earthquake Weather

2006-09-11T07:20:00.000-04:00

There have been many days this past month where the skies have been an almost uninterrupted blue, with temperatures much milder then they normally this time of year.

Of course, this makes me think of the events that occurred five years ago today.

It's odd, how a memory will become imprinted with a particular sense. I can still remember what I was listening to when I had my first fender bender (Sting's "Fortress Around Your Heart"). For years, a certain fragrence would remind me of my first girlfriend. Now, when the temperatures get into the 70s and there are almost no clouds to be seen, I remember the attacks all over again.

I remember the hour of not knowing what had happened to MLW, how the Internet was brought to a standstill. I recall driving home and seeing the smoke rise from miles away. I remember the chaos afterward, the uncertainty, the fear.

I don't have as much fear since then--I don't think I'd be able to function otherwise--but then again I was lucky. I didn't lose anyone. But what I used to think of as beautiful, late summer weather I now associate with death and the end of the world as I knew it.

Perhaps, in that sense, the terrorists did win.

Appetite for Destruction

2006-08-09T07:26:00.000-04:00

Starting around mid-July, I started writing a post about how that month had seemed to have been about change. The post grew by inches but didn't seem to be saying much of anything and what it did say it did so poorly.

When I'd not finished it by the beginning of August, I knew it was time to kill it. I can boil it down to its essence, however: death, birthday, divorce. In retrospect, I believe deleting the post was a mercy--especially from a reader perspective.

I'll try to post something a bit more substantial sometime soon, but I want to sign off with some positive psychic rays pointed toward the southwest. I know they could probably be used right about now.

Never Break the Chain

2006-06-30T07:20:00.000-04:00

A little earlier this week, Sleater-Kinney announced that they were going on "indefinite hiatus," meaning that their most recent album will almost certainly be their last.

I'd like to think that the band waited to make their announcement until after I'd made The Woods' position on my Top Ten list official, but I'm pretty certain that they had made this decision some time ago. As I mentioned in my previous write-up, the creation of the album was very intense, and how they would be able to follow it up was an open question. I'd actually thought that they might record one more album after The Woods, but I also thought that such an album would either be a carbon-copy of the last, a step back, or a reaction against it that would be radically different. And I believed that would have been the end.

What I find curious is not the reason behind the decision (which, by the way, I'm extrapolating based only on press clippings I've read over the past year) but it's timing. The band is in the midst of a tour that will last until mid-August and I doubt very much that they made the announcement in order to increase ticket sales to their remaining shows (although their one date in NYC subsequently sold out). Perhaps it was simply because they didn't want to have to live with the decision anymore, that the pressure of being the only ones to know was too much to carry with everything else that comes with touring.

In any case, it's a shame and they will be missed--at least in this corner of the 'blogosphere.

Root, Root, Root for the Home Team

2006-06-23T07:18:00.000-04:00

Lately, after the mini-Beach Ghost has been put to bed, MLW is oftentimes busy surfing the 'net trolling for a job or selflessly giving of her time to one of the associations to which she belongs. This leaves me with some free time; naturally, instead of using it for something creative or constructive, I'll take advantage of the time to hone my fine motor skills. But I've also been watching quite a bit of baseball; I've probably viewed more games this year than in any other season since I've started following the sport. Of course, it helps when your team is winning, and that's certainly been the case with the Mets this year.

I didn't start out a Mets fan. My initial team loyalty was based on fair weather geography: my father's family was near the Cincinnati area, the Reds were in the midst of their Big Red Machine days, and Rose was still playing. So, I decided I was a Reds fan. But it wasn't like I made any effort to actually see what was going on. If any of my classmates (the vast majority of whom were fans of that other New York team) back when I was a wee tike asked who I favored, I had an answer. I don't think I would have been able to name anyone other than Mr. Rose from that team, but I was able to pass the minimum masculinity requirements necessary for that age.

I continued this passive form of fandom until the fall of 1986, my first semester of college in New York City. One of the new friends I had made was a Mets fan, so of course he was glued to the television for the World Series. Now just about every baseball fan or New York resident (and, I suspect, many folks who live in the Boston area) remembers how this turned out, but I had no idea what would occur when I went to his room to watch Game Six. And it was there that I saw a routine ground ball, dribbling right to the first baseman, go right through his legs. The winning run scored and the series went to Game Seven.

I don't remember most of the last game of that series, but I do remember what happened after the final out: my friend turned down the volume on the TV and opened the window. Outside the city was cheering, thousands of people screaming their jubilation in unison.

From that day on, I was a Mets fan.

Granted, I still wasn't paying very close attention, but I would keep an eye on the standings and catch the last few innings of a game on the tube now and then. It was probably my lack of scrutiny that allowed me to maintain my allegiance, as I missed the concerted--and all too successful--effort the team's management went through to dismantle them.

When I started to become more focused on the team (during the ill-fated 2000 "Subway Series"), I quickly picked up the team hallmarks:

-- Hot players that get traded to the Mets very quickly cool off (read: Mo Vaughn)

-- Players traded by the Mets will go on to have very productive careers (read: Scott Kazmir)

-- Getting a closer to perform consistently is nearly impossible.

-- If the game is close, the Mets will lose.

-- If the game is important, the Mets will lose.

-- If you get your hopes up, you will be crushed.

So I've learned that not expecting too much is essential to retaining one's stomach lining. This year, however, has been different. The team's new manager actually seems to know how to scout talent, and not only are their new acquisitions perfoming superbly, but the players they've promoted from the minors to fill in when the marquee players have gotten hurt are also getting the job done. Better still, they are winning the close games, winning series against teams they have to beat (2 out of 3 from the Yankees, a 4-game sweep of the Diamondbacks, a 3-game sweep of the Phillies) if they want a shot at the post-season, and battling back to win games they would always have lost just a few years ago.

It's exciting to see, so any fence sitters would be well advised to get on the bandwagon now. And if you want some insight into the minutiae that hides beneath the seeming simplicity of the game, do yourself a favor and pick up this book.

Dancing about Architecture

2006-05-23T07:30:00.000-04:00

Today, a little peek into my creative process (such as it is).

So breaking out each album in my top ten into its own post was something I tried for the first time this year. I don't think it's something I'm going to repeat.

It had seemed like a good idea at the time, 10 whole posts that would practically write themselves. After all, this was tuneage that I really dug. But what I'd forgotten to factor in was that I just don't write quickly. Although I've tried over the year to crank out content before revising, so I can get as much down as possible, I still have a tendency to tweak words as I'm typing them. While I don't approach Flaubert levels, if I bang out more than a thousand words in a night, I feel ahead of the game.

As a result, I averaged about a post a week. So about two months of the blog are taken up with my ramblings, and the middle of the year is not that far away. So much for timeliness.

Then of course there's the fact that, for me at least, writing about music is horrendously difficult. My responses to it are emotional first, logical second. I also have little to no music grasp of music theory, so there's not a lot of technical gibber-gabber I can recite. And unless Amazon has been kind enough to record some audio samples, you're not going to have many reference points to what I'm writing about (that is, unless you buy the albums, which you should totally do).

Next year I think I'll go back to one or two bulleted lists. Brevity seems to be working a lot better as far as this is concerned.

So a question to the blogosphere at large: how do you write about music?

Who's to Say I Don't Have Wings?

2006-05-17T19:06:00.000-04:00

#1: Sleater-Kinney - The Woods. Well, this probably wasn't much of a surprise. In truth, it wasn't even close.

Musicians reinventing themselves is nothing new--witness U2's sea change from Rattle & Hum to Achtung Baby--and is actually something that they should do in order to keep from stagnating. Sleater-Kinney has been slowly modifying their sound over the course of their entire career, and in retrospect where they ended up sonically on The Woods makes perfect sense given that gradual evolution. But it's a rare thing for a band to make the previous 10 years of their career seem like just a warm-up, and S-K does just that with the very first note.

The reason the album is such a shift is because the band embraced distortion, volume and a smattering of influences from other sources: the shift to overdrive in "Rollercoaster" is worthy of the Stooges, the solo in "What's Mine is Yours" is pure Hendrix, the keyboards in "Jumpers" could be It's Hard-era Townsend. But there's a difference between absorbing influences and being absorbed by them, and that's a crucial distinction. The band may make nods to Hendrix, The Who and Zeppelin, but it isn't aping them--none of what you hear sounds like anything other than Sleater-Kinney.

Producer Dave Fridmann has received quite a lot of notice for his work, and what he has accomplished highlights how production can fundamentally alter an album (see: Brian Eno). The band has always employed some levels of dissonance on their albums, but the production had been relatively "clean." Not only is the sound louder here, but it's distorted even when it doesn't need to be, and there are more effects layered than I ever recall hearing before.

None of which takes anything away from the band itself, who purposefully took themselves out of their own environment (the album was recorded in upstate New York, a coast away from Portland) and their own comfort zone. According to interviews they've given after the album's release, the recording process was almost enough for the trio to call it quits. But what they managed to create as a result of that stress and effort is, to my ears, probably the high-water mark of their career.

They may never make its like again.

And Then So Clear

2006-05-15T07:30:00.000-04:00

#2: Brian Eno - Another Day on Earth. It's a closely guarded secret in the music industry that there are actually three Brian Enos: Invisible Eno, Pop Eno, and Ambient Eno. Invisible Eno is, ironically, the one who's probably had the greatest impact on the populace as a whole, as he's the one who helps other artists (including U2, David Bowie, and Talking Heads, to name a few) make the best albums of their careers. Few people may recognize his contribution, but should really give him a hearty "thank you" should they run into him.

Pop Eno is actually the original Eno from whom the other Enos were created. After his stint in Roxy Music, he went off on his lonesome to make beautifully twisted songs that sounded almost Radio-friendly if you weren't listening too closely (or reading the titles to songs such as "Baby's on Fire" or "The Paw Paw Negro Blowtorch").

Then, of course, there's Ambient Eno, who--classical composers aside--not only helped to launch the genre but also came up with what I believe to be the best definition of what it's about: music that rewards both passive and active listening.

For the most part, these three Enos are not usually seen together. Most music fans who aren't prone to OCD have probably been exposed to Invisible Eno without realizing it (after all, how many bazillion people own a copy of The Joshua Tree?), but may not be aware that he has his own, extensive catalog. Sometimes Pop Eno lets Ambient Eno pop his head in for a few tracks, but Ambient Eno has never returned the favor.

Until this album.

In the past, the one clear indicator that an Eno album had been crafted by either Pop or Ambient Eno was the presence or absence of vocals. If there was singing on it, it was Pop Eno; no vox, Ambient. In my experience, this suited the fans of the two, visible Enos just fine, as they almost always preferred one over the other (to the surprise of no one, Ambient Eno is my fave).

Another Day on Earth, though, is a curveball: it is, essentially, an ambient album with vocals. And not the vocals one would normally associate with ambient--harmonic choirs, chanting, or wordless phrases--but actual lyrics. But it's the way that the vocals are treated that shifts them toward the ambient realm. Eno's one big weak spot has always been his voice: he doesn't have much of a range and his delivery is as emotional as a Cray-2. On this album, he compensates for this by treating his vocals as just another instrument.

As cliché as that reads, on this album it's absolutely true. The treatments are pervasive and obvious, as his vocals are pitch-shifted, phased and layered throughout. None of which would matter that much if he hadn't crafted music to support it. As usual, the album's production is excellent and the music is languid and somewhat mechanical-sounding without feeling sterile or cold.

It's not for everyone--and chances are the more you like Ambient Eno may have more than a little bearing on how much you enjoy this album. For me, there was only one album that I liked better.

Next: What it is.

A Writer of Fictions

2006-05-10T07:25:00.000-04:00

#3: The Decemberists - Picaresque. Another group to which I'd not been exposed until last year, although at least I'd heard of them. Their previous album, Her Majesty, had caused quite a few ripples among the indie congnosenti, but I had no idea what to expect when I first put this on. Which was a good thing.

What I got was, as I've taken to calling it, musical theater--without the theater. Colin Meloy, who handles both songwriting and lead vocal duties, doesn't write songs so much as long narrative threads that sound more like short stories that have been set to music. Take this little snapshot of cleverness from album opener "The Infanta:"

Among five score pachyderm
All canopied and passenger'd
Sit the Duke and Duchess's luscious young girls
Within sight of the Baroness
Seething spite for this lithe largess
By her side sits the Baron--her barren-ness barbs her

The music tends to be folky yet dramatic, which just serves to reinforce the theatrical connection (to my mind, at least). To accomodate the stories, some of the tunes are stretched out to prog-rock length, but the time is meant to serve the virtuosity (and--let's be honest here--occasional verbosity) of the lyrics instead of showcasing the playing.

I'm not just pulling this out of my arse, either. Heck, the review over at AllMusic name-checks Kurt Weill. So don't take my word for it.

The other advantages of this approach is that, unlike actual musical theater, you won't have to pay ~$100 to hear it. Or, for that matter, be bothered with all that pesky dialogue they use to fill in the spaces between songs.

A Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left

2006-05-05T07:26:00.000-04:00

#4: Andrew Bird - Andrew Bird and the Mysterious Production of Eggs. I'd never heard of Mr. Bird before I'd had a chance to hear this album. This would be somewhat understandable if this were his debut album--but it's his fifth.

Primarily a violinist by trade, it's not surprising that his album has a bit of a relaxed, chamber pop/jazz feel, even though the violin isn't always front and center in the mix. Mr. Bird also plays just about every instrument on the album, which helps it achieve a pretty consistent sound. He also manages a rather eerie whistle, which, when I heard it on the unnamed opening track, I thought was a singing saw. Really.

What I also enjoy about this album beyond the sound is the wordplay. Bird doesn't have a particularly large range (or at least he doesn't make use of it) and emotiveness is generally at a premium. But I do enjoy his lyrics, even though they're somewhat relegated to the Beck school of quasi-nonsense. How can you not like a guy who rhymes "Valkyries," "proclivities," "trustees" and "B-17s?"

Hell Yes

2006-05-01T07:14:00.000-04:00

#5: Beck - Guero. I like to think of Guero as the equivalent of a major league pitcher who's been in the game for a few years: you know they've only got a certain repertoire to work with, but they have such control that they're just as likely to jam you up with something you didn't see coming.

Guero is something like that. After the rather radical departure of Sea Change (which I also picked up recently and really enjoyed), Mr. Hansen went back to his bread and butter for this one: plundering music from disparate genres, crafting lyrics that generally make little to know sense, and gluing it together with a healthy helping of hip-hop.

It works. The album is remarkably solid through the vast majority of its running time, and there are a number of high points, including the insistent "Hell Yes," the catchy "Girl," and the slower "Missing."

None of it really transcends his prior work, but I'll gladly take this over an untold number of other albums that came out in '05.

Deep in the Heart

2006-04-28T07:28:00.000-04:00

Finally, a post about something other than my top ten:

MLW took the mini-Beach Ghost back to the hospital earlier this week so her doctor could see how her heart was doing. The news continues to be good.

While the size of the remaining portion of the growth on her heart has not gone down (which we knew was a distinct possibility), the size of her heart itself has increased. This makes it less of a problem, a trend that should continue as she continues to grow.

Even better, her doctor declared that she would not have to come back for another examination for another year. MLW was especially happy to hear that, since our daughter was anything but cooperative for the battery of tests that had to be performed.

I'd pretty much already convinced myself that the tests would show that everything was hunky-dory, but you never really know, and I found myself being very relieved when I got the call.

Now, back to the list.

How Fortunate the Man With None

2006-04-25T07:05:00.000-04:00

#6: Dead Can Dance - 12th October: USA Chicago. In the interest of full disclosure, I should note that I went to one of the shows during the tour from which these CDs were recorded. For this and other reasons (which I'm about to go into in more detail), it should be noted that this pick is more subjective than most. Sure, picking ten albums and ranking them is a subjective exercise in and of itself, but that's a subject for another time (and, quite frankly, some other blogger--any other blogger).

I came late to the Dead Can Dance party, and through the back door besides. The group had already said their piece and hung it up by the time I first heard of them, and then only because I was just becoming familiar with the excellent work of Lisa Gerrard (although a show on Hearts of Space featuring DCD may have also helped).

In any event, given the supposed bad blood between Ms. Gerrard and Brendan Perry (the other DCD principal), I had always assumed that their records would be the only way that I'd ever experience their music. Wrong.

For reasons that are still not entirely clear, the two decided to patch things up long enough to do a tour in both Europe and the U.S., and when they came to our area me and MLW were in attendance. Needless to say, I was enthralled.

None of which really describes what's to be found on this audio document of one of those shows. I like to place DCD in the "neo-gothic / medieval / world music / ambient" category...because they're not really a comfortable fit elsewhere. The show was a pretty good representation of what they do best: generally slow songs on a mixture of period and modern instruments (gotta love the hammered dulcimer!) with lyrics that are either totally incomprehensible or leaning towards such subjects as death and...well, let me put it this way: one of the pieces in their repetoire is based on a poem entitled "I am Stretched on Your Grave."

Although I selected this particular show because it was the last of the group's tour, in truth there is not a lot of variation between the performances. But Mr. Perry and Ms. Gerrard achieve a precarious balance between their two styles--she the mannered muse who uses her contralto to soothe and stun in equal measure, he the upbeat partner whose baritone rings out on songs that sometimes border on pop--that makes the whole that much stronger.

But you're probably not going to be able to dance to it.

Helpful link: Folks who want to hear for themselves can get hooked up here.

Fooled Ya Baby

2006-04-17T07:06:00.000-04:00

#7: Nikka Costa - Can'tneverdidnothin'. Ms. Costa has been releasing music since she was a wee youth. She has a strong, soulful voice, she has charisma out the wazoo, her material can be funky and rocking, and (from what I understand) she puts on a helluva live show. So chances are pretty good you've never heard of her.

This album, her second on a major here in the U.S., goes from strength to strength. There are a few slow-burning ballads, a few cuts that bring out the funk, and a number of white-hot cuts (the title track, for instance) that sound not unlike a certain Led Zeppelin (one review I read made a comparison with Lenny Kravitz--who guests on a few songs--but that's selling the material rather short, IMHO).

Lyrically I don't think there are any great revelations here, some songs about love and sex and believing in yourself and blah blah blah; truth be told, I can't recall a lot that jumps out aside from the title track (which is sung in the same one-word rush as it appears). But that's not really the vibe here. All in all, the disc's main goals would appear to be to get you to either shake your ass, wave your lighter or bang your head. And this it accomplishes quite well.

One After 303

2006-04-04T07:15:00.000-04:00

#8: Pete Namlook & MoveD: The Art of Love. Another top ten, another entry from the FAX label.

Y'know, I love listening to ambient / electronica / what-have-you, but I hate like the dickens trying to explain why. It's not like I can point out some particularly insightful or witty lyrics. Heck, even the song titles are pretty much a mystery. Take the title I used for this entry, for instance. What's it mean? Why not just call it "304?" Wish I knew...

In any case, this album leams more toward the electronica axis, since there are beats throughout. Still, it's a rather mellow affair, with the majority of the 6 songs here running over 10 minutes. The album is supposed to serve as an "intuitive journey through the moods of love," which I interpret as boot-knockin' music. I suppose it could possibly be used in that fashion, but I think MLW would laugh me right out of the house were I to suggest it.

If I were to struggle to equate this with another musical touchstone (and believe me, I'm struggling), I'd actually make the heretical tie between this and some of the mellower material of Miles Davis' fusion period. The use of trumpet on a couple tracks is probably what fostered that particular connection. And, truth be told, this is nowhere near as dark as Miles--for the most part, Namlook and MoveD are satisfied to establish a very comfortable groove and adding or taking away complexity as warranted. It's not a challenging listen, but neither is it meant to be.

If you want a better (and lengthier) analysis, take a gander over here.

Make it Go by Slow

2006-03-28T07:10:00.000-05:00

#9) Pernice Brothers: Discover a Lovelier You. Why the Pernice Brothers don't sell a billion units every time they release an album is beyond me. Perhaps they're not manly enough for the youth of today, who prefer their sad-sack lyrics buried beneath pop/punk noise. Or maybe it's not dour enough. Or perhaps the entire package is just too...perfect.

I could almost understand the last reason, as the majority of the songs on this album have been polished clean, and just about any traces of musical grit that would have derailed its focus have been removed. But this is what Joe Pernice does--he writes pop songs and breakup songs and lost love songs, and the band tries to make each individual song absolutely bulletproof. But if you like pop music, especially when bands in the 60s were doing it, then you should be listening to these folks.

That said, this particular album suffers a bit from front-loading. The lead-off track, "There Goes the Sun" (used in a Sears commercial of all things), is classic Pernice: a song about love and death buried beneath peppy music. That's followed by the somewhat more direct yet even glossier "Saddest Quo" (favorite line: "There's a train wreck / picking up survivors of a plane crash") and then the somewhat rockin' "Snow."

Things don't exactly go downhill from there, but those first three tracks are most certainly the high-water mark of the album. I'd still probably place the rest of the album above the majority of music I'd hear on the radio, but I don't really listen to commercial radio any more (nowadays, I just click over to SomaFM or Sleepbot). As was the case with Doves, I still think the Pernice Brothers' debut album was their best; also like Doves, I think you can't go wrong with anything from their catalog.

As I write this, work on the next album is well under way. Anyone planning on jumping on the bandwagon would do well to keep their site bookmarked. Since the band releases on their own label, there's generally an incentive to pre-purchase. Because I shelled out early for Discover a Lovelier You, it came with a free mini-comic! How's that for smart salesmanship?

It's a Wicked Mind / With an Axe to Grind

2006-03-21T07:07:00.000-05:00

Those of you who were waiting on their next musical purchasing decision until after I had revealed my top ten releases from 2005 can finally breathe easy--it's here.

#10) Doves: Some Cities. I'll admit right up front that I'm not thrilled that Doves are moving further and further from the atmospheric band they were when they released Lost Souls. I'm all for bands evolving, but these boys seem to be evolving into more of a typical British rock group with every album.

Not exactly a ringing endorsement, is it?

Still, there's one thing that I believe sets Doves apart from the rest of their countrymen--the production. It's my little pet theory that Doves past life as an electronica band has served them well, giving their tunes more sonic "weirdness" than their counterparts. The best example of this can be found on the sublime "Snowden," whose hook sounds like it's either being made by an e-bowed guitar, an altered vocal, a theremin...or all three at once.

The more straightforward songs (i.e., the lead-off single) are loaded at the beginning of the album, which makes for something of a stylistic shift once the "four on the floor" material is done with. I don't really think they're best served by trying to make hits--they're stronger than that. Then again, I think it's working for them, so if it helps finance the next album I'm not going to complain all that much.

So get it for "Snowden," then see what else on here strikes your fancy. Better yet, start with Lost Souls.

Tiny Suns Infused With Sour

2006-03-16T07:03:00.000-05:00

Well, I was down to two layers for a day or so at least; however, winter's not going down without a fight.

In keeping with my theme of how much the season sucks, My Lovely Wife was unceremoniously shit-canned from her place of employment last Thursday. It's not at all what you'd call a shocking development, rather a matter of whether she would leave before they let her go. As it happens, they also laid off her boss, who got her into the job in the first place.

From a mental health perspective, this is a fantastic development. Financially...not so much.

Still, you'd be hard pressed to tell that MLW hasn't been "on the job," as she's picked up a slew of freelance work and will have had three interviews before the week is up. As always (and I have more experience with this then I ever really wanted), it's just a question of when she's going to find the right fit, not if.

But I'd be lying if I said that we're not worried about the money to some degree.

Next: Back to the music. Promise.

Winter Was Hard

2006-03-06T07:48:00.000-05:00

The forecast is calling for warmer weather--but I'll believe that spring has arrived when I'm able to commute to work in less than three layers for a week straight. No, not even then. Check back with me in June.

I think I'm getting to the point in my life where I really begin to dread the winter, and not just on account of the chill. Let me illustrate my point by way of example:

A couple weeks into the new year, my mom and step-dad found out that their dog had advanced lymphoma. A couple weeks after that, she was dead. A couple weeks after that, a long-time friend of theirs succumbed to another form of cancer.

The topper, though, was what happened to my mother-in-law just a few days ago. A friend of hers, who had been battling a prescription drug problem, overdosed and died. The same day she got a call that another friend of hers was in the hospital--he was dead by the time she arrived.

Although this is the most extreme example, the past few winters have been more or less like that. When MLW's sister was battling cancer, the roughest patch was during the winter. When our first pregnancy resulted in a miscarriage, it was mid-January. The mini-BG's surgery was at the end of February.

You get the picture. And this is just the past three years.

Now, I realize that there has been some balancing experiences: the Beach Ghostlette was conceived during the winter (cue wah-wah guitar), and her surgery was completely successful, making the stress it put the two of us through very, very worth it.

On the whole, though, I'd just as soon Mother Nature rouse her ass up and get along with the next season already.

Next: Some music? Other blather? Whatever it is, it's got to be light-hearted.

Scar

2006-02-23T07:20:00.000-05:00

A year ago today, MLW and I were taking the mini-Beach Ghost to the hospital where she would be undergoing open heart surgery. She was not yet four months old at the time. To simply note that this was a watershed event in our lives would be drastically understating the case.

I'd planned on marking the occasion here, but when I received this essay from MLW about the experience, I knew it would suit better than any ramblings I'd be able to dredge up. Here it is, with names altered, as always, to maintain at least the illusion of privacy:

It has been a year since our daughter underwent open heart surgery to debulk a cardiac fibroma. The time leading up to the event was, in many respects, the normal stuff of new parenthood: changing routines, adjusting to the presence of another being in our lives and deep emotional bonding. But the Beach Ghostlette's first months also had an overlay of palpable disquiet.

In my hubris, I thought that the pregnancy was the time when I would have experienced the most concern. Having lost pregnancies, I was worried about the viability of our daughter from the start. We conceived her only weeks following a miscarriage. But I was very fortunate. My pregnancy was fairly uncomplicated. I traveled, attended graduate school, worked and enjoyed the feeling of life growing inside me. In retrospect, the pregnancy was a blessed respite from the challenging times to come.

From the birth experience we knew something was amiss. The baby did not tolerate my contractions well. Her heart rate kept plummeting to a worrisome low of 35 beats per minute, causing nurses to scramble and make hurried calls to my obstetrician on and off over a period of six hours. As I labored, hospital staff kept a very close watch on the baby's fluctuating heart rate. It would normalize, and then my contractions would start up again. The scalp monitor digits flashed the bad news in red—35! 35! 35! Pitocin was administered, discontinued, administered, discontinued. My desire to have a vaginal birth was eclipsed by my prayers for a live birth.

The moment of our daughter's arrival was joyous. She was a caesarian delivery, emerging swollen, pink and annoyed. Her cries announced her presence. In my darkest hours to come I reflected on those first moments and savored them.

But by the third day of her life, we were told that something was wrong, that a mass took up the better part of right ventricle. The doctors were unnervingly tight-lipped. As we learned more about her prospects it was clear that no one—no doctor, no parent, no friend—could assure us that she would survive this trial. In this context I tried to act normally.

The next few months were a blur of disrupted sleep schedules, doctor visits, testing and speculation. Our girl seemed to thrive and by any measure was an "easy baby". Her personality was gentle and quiet, and she didn't seem to be manifesting any external signs of distress from the tumor. Her gentleness was only eclipsed by her physical beauty. We considered ourselves very fortunate on many levels. However she didn't breastfeed very easily. I thought little of it; lots of babies have trouble with breastfeeding, I told myself. I just focused on the present: spending time with the baby, finishing graduate school and getting through the winter.

By early February, the doctors had returned with their unanimous verdict: The baby would require surgery to avert congestive heart failure. As prepared as we thought we were, this was still very scary news.

To my final days, I will never forget the moment that the baby's cardiologist ruled out cancer. Since the first day the doctors told us about the tumor, there had been some discussion about the remote possibility of cardiac cancer. It was unlikely, but fatal. A few weeks before her surgery, the doctor had insisted on one more study. A consummate professional and healer, he did his best to play it down but I sensed some real concern. The CT-Scan process took the better part of a morning. I futilely tried to comfort the baby as the nurses inserted IV lines. I lay next to her as she was photographed. I walked her around to quell her anxiety afterwards. But I couldn't shake my own fear.

After the test was done, the baby and I went back to the doctor's office to wait for results. We started talking about the prospect of surgery when the phone rang. There was an almost imperceptible moment of hesitation before he picked up. As he listened, the look of relief on his face lit up the room. He told me that the scan revealed no further mass-type tissue around or outside of the heart. I asked him, “You thought she might have had cancer, didn't you?" It was too direct a question. He demurred, "I saw a shadow in the echoes that I did not like. I had to be sure." I cried with relief.

The day of the surgery was predictably tense and long. My cousin and my mother came to the hospital, but made their presence modestly. At my request people stayed away. I felt burdened by my own anxiety to the degree that I did not feel strong enough to even pretend to be present for anyone else. When the anesthesiologist appeared in the waiting area, I studied every line on his face for some sense of the outcome. His smile told us what we needed to know: the baby had come through the surgery well.

The next week or so was packed with the daily dramas of a big recovery. I stayed in the PICU the whole time, sleeping in the baby's room on a padded bench next to the window. I vaguely remember a big snowstorm. Foolishly I brought study materials in case I would have time to prepare for my midterms. Instead, I stayed close to the baby, staring at the millions of monitors in a state of shock.

When the baby started to surface to consciousness, she experienced enormous distress. I couldn’t tell whether it was the pain, the environment, the feeling of restraint or something else. Her anguish became so acute that no amount of whispers and touches helped. Her hospital crib resembled a little cage. It was almost big enough to accommodate a short adult. So I climbed in next to her. She finally stopped crying. Miraculously, the nurses let me stay there.

Eight days after the surgery we were ready to go home. Right before her discharge, the baby started crying incessantly. My intuition told me that it wasn’t physical pain. It was what Buddhism refers to as dukkha, the pain of wanting and being. She sensed her ordeal was almost over and felt urgency to move on. I touched her and told her, “Baby, I am getting your clothes. I am going to put on your outfit and your coat. Then I am going to put you in your car seat. Then we are going to go home!” She stopped crying immediately. From that moment to the time we got home, she did not shed a single tear.

A few weeks later, she demonstrated her perceptiveness again. Since we had returned home from the surgery, her coping skills began to wane at night. Right around bedtime, she would get agitated. She would wake up screaming from nightmares. I took her to the pediatrician to try and get to the root of the trouble. Was it hospital flashbacks? Physical pain?

After a close examination, our pediatrician paused, reflected and then asked, “Do you talk about the surgery and the hospital experience at home? I mean, do you talk about it with people in front of the baby?” I had to admit that, yes, as part of my coping process I talked about it all the time. “There have been studies on toddlers that they sense and understand the emotional states of their parents as well as a lot of what they are saying. Not so much has been done on behalf of babies, but why would they be any different?” Why indeed. I wept with recognition and guilt. The doctor went on: “It is very important for you to tell her all the time that she is strong baby! No more surgery! It is important for you to manage the experience, for her and for you.” At the words no more surgery her face lit up.

It was obvious pretty soon after she came home from the surgery that the baby who arrived on Election Day 2004 was not the same baby who lives with us now. The strain her heart endured before the surgery made her tired, diminished her appetite and muted her true personality. Post surgery, she went from soft pastels to full Technicolor, eating more, doing more, being more. In retrospect, all of the earlier problems seem to make sense: the birth challenge, the breastfeeding problems, the quietude.

A year later, our baby is anything but quiet. She runs and climbs, talks and points, laughs and loves. She understands the majority of what we say to her. She has mastery over a limited number of spoken words (mama, dada, bippie, banana) and a wider hand sign vocabulary. Her current distress concerns her molars. By the anniversary this week, she should be done cutting the top left one that I felt coming in the other day. My cousin's prayer came true: “May the surgery be a distant, painful memory next year.” And so it is. It is more, though. It is our baby's story of the magic scar on her chest. We plan on telling her that it is like Harry Potter’s lightning bolt--a mark left by the angel doctors who saved her life. It is a symbol of victory, but most of all, it is a reminder of the miraculous.

All Will be Revealed

2006-02-12T22:54:00.000-05:00

I've gotta say, 2005 was a pretty fine year, musically speaking. Not only did I find myself reacting more favorably to records then I had in the past couple years, but I also had some real difficulty narrowing down my list to ten entries.

I'll of course be counting down my personal faves over the course of the next few entries, but I thought I'd also give some air time to the few albums who--had I been in a different mind-set the day I finalized it--might have slipped onto my list.

The Chemical Brothers--Push the Button: At what point can you predict chaos? Although we only have two of their albums, the Chemical Brothers seem to have a formula they follow in order to create music--anything goes, and it helps if it's loud. Take the lead-off track, "Galvanize," which features a great middle-eastern string sample, Q-Tip, and beats that are so front and center that even white folks like me can't miss 'em. And hooks remain a strong suit; I recall visiting a friend of ours who had a keychain with a series of buttons, each of which played a sample when pressed. That was for a different album, but that's still a key component of their approach.

Kate Bush--Aerial: Boy, did the Red Shoes suck, so it's tough to honestly say that this doesn't seem a better album simply because it's a significant step up from there. Although she recycles the idea of splitting the album into halves from Hounds of Love--one half individual songs and the other a "song cycle"--this time she expands the idea and gives each half a full disc. And unlike Hounds, I really enjoyed the song cycle more than the unconnected songs. With few exceptions, this is a very languid album, which is where it ultimately falls down for me. Still, I love the fact that Kate is still weird after all these years (she sings Pi to several dozen digits, and there's a memorable couplet from "Mrs. Bartolozzi:" 'Slooshy sloshy slooshy sloshy / Get that dirty shirty clean.') and the production is, as always, fantastic.

Eraldo Bernocchi & Harold Budd--Music for "Fragments from the Inside": In 2004, Harold Budd released Avalon Sutra and announced that he was retiring from music. In 2005, two new albums bearing his name were released. I can't speak to the other album, which was a soundtrack he worked on with Robin Guthrie, since I never got around to picking it up (so many albums, so little time). This CD was from a performance at an art installation in 2003 (hence the title). The disc begins with Budd on his own, playing his usual brand of piano minimalism; the rest of the work is with Bernocchi adding electronic rhythms and other treatments. This makes it more propulsive than Budd would be normally, which is not a bad thing, especially for people who aren't big ambient fans. Ultimately, though, this struck me as treading ground that was already covered during his collaboration with Hector Zazou.

I'd recommend any of these to those inclined to try something new, but the year's best is still to come.

Let's Start This Off Without Any Words

2006-01-24T08:57:00.000-05:00

And the prize for "Most Concise, Unintended, Alternate Review of the WoT Series, Presented as Commentary for Another Review" goes to MLW, who, when asked her reaction to my previous post on the subject, opined:

"Bo-ring!"

She was referring, of course, to her interest in the subject of the post, and not the insightful observations (and countless witticisms) contained therein.

I think.

Big Wheel Keeps on Turnin'

2006-01-22T23:23:00.000-05:00

I mentioned some months back that I had read the latest in what had been the interminable Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan. I say "interminable" not because the series was unreadable (since I've read every one), but rather because there truly hadn't seemed to be any end in sight. Jordan has stated that there will be only one more book in the series, so the light is most certainly beginning to appear at the end of the tunnel. Although you'd be hard pressed to find much of anything in this last book to indicate an approaching end.

For some reason, this particular book has been lauded as a return to form, with the previously glacial forward momentum of the plot taking giant steps forward. A closer look at the threads that are being advanced, however, reveals that this is simply not true. One of the characters rescues his wife (a process that itself took several books), another of the characters gets married in accordance with prophecy, yet another character prevails over her rivals and wins a throne and what used to be the main character captures one of the Great Big Evil's henchman.

Of those four, only the last could really be linked to the plot at large--which was probably why it got about 10 pages out of over 700. The other three are really just resolutions to tangents that prevented the plot from moving forward in the first place. It's only now that those threads have tied off that the story has any chance of moving forward.

The actual plot of the book is supposed to be focused on the coming battle with the Dark One (the Wheel of Time's version of Sauron), yet very few of the characters in the book think that this is a situation that requires any urgency on their part. This despite the very strong evidence that the Dark One is going to be busting out of his prison, including: the fulfillment of prophecies, climate shifs, invasions, and evidence that the very prison "bars" (in this case, discs of what are supposed to be an "unbreakable" substance, evidently the WoT version of adamantium) themselves are crumbling! I tend to picture the characters sitting in a car, arguing about the color of the upholstery as they drive off a cliff.

Now, each of the tangents I mentioned above is presented as important to the eventually arriving Battle Royale, which we as readers can certainly take on faith. But the length to which these points are extended simply isn't justified. The reason things take so long is supposedly because there are so many different factions operating at their own purposes that even simple tasks must be drawn out over the course of several days--a point that is reinforced over and over and over again. Evidently, if you fart at the wrong moment in WoT World, some village halfway across the continent will have a bad harvest.

This meticulous devotion to needless detail extends to the characters themselves--there are hundreds of them. It's one thing to have a cast of thousands in a series of books, it's quite another to present dozens of minor characters with absolutely no context whatsoever. Oftentimes you'll be presented with a name or names of minor characters, perhaps only in passing, who are not actually doing anything in the present scene, and you will be expected to recall who they are, why they're there and what they want.

Should you have any difficulty in recalling this information, you're free to find it out on your own time. There is a glossary in the back of the book which presents information on a broad range of topics, most of which doesn't address the characters in any way. To expect your readers to slavishly commit to memory every last detail of your books is arrogant; not providing them with a means to figure it out is insulting. This is a fantasy novel, folks, I shouldn't be required to study it the last 10 books in order to understand the 11th.

And despite the fact that the series is now 11 books in, the characters are as paper-thin as they were when they were first introduced. It was an interesting device to associate a physical tic (tugging at a braid, smoothing a skirt) or a manner of thinking (men not understanding women, vice versa) with certain characters when they were first introduced as a shortcut for characterization. But as the books progressed, these tics were not replaced by anything deeper, or else they were farmed out to multiple characters (it's now difficult to find a woman who wears a skirt in WoT who isn't thinking about or in the process of smoothing it) ; I had expected at this point that at least a token amount of character progression would have taken place, but that just isn't the case.

The best example of this would be the main character, Rand al'Thor, who is the WoT version of either Aragorn (a hero king who had been living "in exile") or Jesus (destined to die to save humanity). Ever since Rand has learned of his destiny in the middle of the series, he's become grim, focused on the endgame, and ever-so-slightly insane. And he's remained grim, focused on the endgame, and ever-so-slightly insane ever since. In fact, the only real way a reader could differentiate his character over the course of the books is by counting the number of wounds he has. In this last book, he's lost a hand--which will no doubt result in his becoming more grim, more focused on the endgame, and ever-so-slightly more insane. I expect that he'll next experience character growth by losing an entire limb. Or maybe an eye. Hell, I'd stand on line for the book on the first day it was released if I knew beforehand that Rand would go through the majority of it without a head. Now that would take character!

Then there is the much-maligned portrayal of women. Almost every female charcter (I say "almost," although I can't think of an exception at the moment) is depicted as someone who, at core, is a controlling shrew who needs either to receive or mete out a spanking. At worst, this is thinly disguised sexism; at best, merely espousing a rather adolescent viewpoint. Since I believe Mr. Jordan set out to portray a matriarchal society as a reaction against the typical, male-dominated, fantasy setting, I'd like to give him the benefit of the doubt. But it ain't easy. The main men, however, are for the most part portrayed as idiot savants: they're good fer the fightin', but "wool-headed" for just about everything else. The Harry Potter series, as maligned as it occasionally is for being "kiddie lit," has managed to squeeze in more emotional maturity in 6 books than Mr. Jordan has managed in 11. As someone who's read all of the Potter books, I can also attest that at least Ms. Rowling has steadily ramped up the maturity level to match her audience's age--a lesson that seems utterly lost in WoTville; that is, unless meaningless complexity counts.

The only way that the next (and "last") book can complete the task of resolving the myriad loose ends is how it should have been done in the first place--quickly. By doing so, Mr. Jordan will finally expose the series as the shell game it truly is. There is no Gordian Knot to be found here, just another 'ultimate' battle between good and evil that got lost somewhere between the Shire and Mordor.

Gluttons for punishment, however, will be pleased to learn that another 2 "prequel" books will come out after the series is finished (one has already been published). Perhaps then we'll find out exactly what mysterious force has been wrinkling all those skirts.

All is Calm

2006-01-06T12:10:00.000-05:00

Ah, another holiday season has come and gone. As usual, MLW and I drug the mini-BG through three states in order to visit our families. Fortunately, I took some extra time off this year, so we were able to have a day that didn't require driving.

The routine has changed somewhat in the last couple years, and I'm now trying to view these excursions as yet another in my long list of reasons why I never plan on getting divorced--I'd prefer that the mini-BG not have to go through the additional hassle of trying to get all the relatives within the space of three or four days.

Again, the relatives didn't go completely apeshit on the Beach Ghostlette, for which MLW and I were both very grateful. I figure we've got another year, maybe two, before she truly begins to understand the true meaning of getting gifts. Although, truth be told, I'm looking forward to dreaming up complex shell games to perpetuate Santa's existance (hopefully she won't discover this 'blog before she realizes the "truth").

New Year's, on the other hand, was probably a trip we shouldn't have taken. We went to visit an Aunt who's about a 4+ hour drive from us. We'd planned to leave by mid-afternoon, but instead hit the road after 6. The baby dozed briefly in the car, but was pretty much awake the rest of the way. By the time we arrived, it was after 11.

Then the fun started. The mini-BG generally goes to bed between 8:30 and 9:30, and is almost always asleep before her play aquarium has finished playing its calming music. That night, however, she had gone right past sleepy and into the realm of the overtired. We put her down and the wailing began. We both went in to soothe her, which of course is one of the things that you just do not do. By the time she finally succumbed to sleep, it was about 1 a.m.

When we woke on the day of New Year's Eve, it was clear that the baby had caught something. She was generally lethargic, and had a wet cough. The cough subsided as the day progressed, but the lethargy--and the fussiness that accompanied it--did not. We ended up ringing in the New Year in a quiet fashion, each of us reading a book, the baby doped up on Children's Tylenol and my aunt and her beau still at the dinner party we were forced to leave early.

The Beach Ghostlette showed signs of improvement on Sunday, and was pretty much her delightful self by the time we got back on the road Monday morning. Again, she was awake the majority of the ride, and providing constant entertainment in a confined space was as taxing in a car as it was in an airplane.

By the time the work week started, all of us were sick to one degree or another. But that seems to be going around. Perhaps the avian flu has made it here already?

Cheerful thoughts, no?

I'll end on an up note: regardless of how I portrayed it, it was good to see folks during the holidays--heck, I wish that we could have spent more time with some of them. And while there was a lot of travel, there were also time for quiet.

Plus, Santa dropped off some of the items from my wish list. Like this little light-hearted affair, which I'm off to read now:

Every Little Thing She Does is Magic

2005-12-15T22:47:00.000-05:00

The mini-BG is getting ready to walk. She's able to take a step or two (usually toward the outstretched arms of me or MLW), but her balance is still too precarious to do any more than that.

However, she's becoming more and more intersted in standing by herself, which she's doing with greater frequency and more confidence. It's not going to be long now before she really gives that cat what for...

And yes, she does look incredibly cute doing it.

Read About It

2005-12-10T23:23:00.000-05:00

I'm still a bit in "catch-up" mode, in terms of things I wanted to blather about here. So pardon me while I dredge the ole memory banks for an event a few weeks past...

Not long after we had returned from our vacation*, MLW and I traveled into the city with the mini-Beach Ghost because the man who created her name (detailed here) was going to be signing copies of his latest book.

I sensed we might be in for a rough time, since I knew the store where the signing was to be held was by no means spacious. Although the author had originally been booked at another, larger store, the mentally deficient person in charge of events at the chain-to-remain-nameless had booked a "bigger" author there, so our author got bumped to the backup venue. And, in a move that I thought was particularly unsavvy, they offered up bracelets for the limited seating on the day of the signing--at 1 pm. This is perfect for college students or people who worked in a five-block radius. Who do they think is going to be dropping the ducats in their stores?

But I digress.

The store was, as dreaded, completely mobbed. We arrived around 6:30 and the throng of people (who were crowded to one side of a magazine rack that bisected the space lengthwise) was already so deep that I had to stand on tiptoe just to see the podium. The baby, who probably wasn't at all cognizant of the significance of the event, got tired of sitting in her car seat almost immediately. We put her on the floor, where she proceeded to pull out as many magazines as she could get her hands on.

Twice while we waited for 7 to roll around, the little miss had to have her diapers changed. The first time, one of the other geeks on line made the unfortunate error in judgement of asking whether we couldn't just take the baby to the bathroom. MLW, who was already using her coat in order to protect the under-30s from the sight of a wet diaper, set him straight in short order. I don't recall if he was around for the poopy di-dee.

The talk began soon after 7, and--since the A/V was as well prepped as the rest of the event--we could only hear bits and pieces, and those only when we strained to listen. The talk didn't last too long, nor did the Q&A session that followed. But then came the signing.

The baby, while well-behaved, required pretty much constant attention in order not to go into Meltdown Mode; MLW and I traded off the duty, which got much easier when we had moved past the magazine racks and into some open space.

By the time we got to him, the author was clearly becoming tired (evidently he had flown in the same day), and I was frazzled and sweaty (it was unseasonably warm and the store--of course--didn't have the air conditioning on). Still, he smiled when we took a group photo, was quite friendly with the mini-BG, and personalized a book for her and for my father (who has read the first book in the series and is hooked). When we walked out the door of the store, it was 9:30. The baby was asleep before we hit the tunnel.

Was it worth it? Absolutely--but I don't think we'll be going when the next book comes out.

* - MLW, upon reading my entry on the subject, was under the impression that I hadn't enjoyed myself whilst vacationing. Far from it--I get to do days upon days of nothing far too infrequently. The Caribbean wouldn't have been on my short list of places to vacation, but I sure as heck aren't going to turn down a trip either.

And I Thank You

2005-11-30T23:36:00.000-05:00

Inspired in equal parts by the fact that Thanksgiving has just passed, by this particular entry on another blog, and because I just don't do it enough, I'd like to present a list of things for which I'm thankful:

My Daughter: She is a generally happy soul, and most days I still wonder what I did to deserve her. She has begun picking up a few words of sign language ("more," "please," "cat," "fish," and "eat" are the entirety of what she currently knows); I can't help but project a certain amount of intelligence onto her.

My Family: They were supportive of almost all of my choices, even when they didn't necessarily understand them. They're still supportive, but they also respect boundaries.

My Friends: They're a foul-mouthed bunch who recognize the line between good and bad taste--and gleefully step across it.

Modern Medicine: I'll bitch about the cost of health insurance and health care in general with the best of them, but after the mini-BG successfully had heart surgery before she was four months old, I'm happy to pay for it.

My Job: Somehow, I found a place that lets me keep my writing and editing muscles in shape, is involved with the Internet, pays a good salary, and is within walking distance of where I live.

Creature Comforts: Like just about everyone I know, I worry about money. But if I really want to get some piece of entertainment ephemera (be it a book, DVD, CD, or what have you)...I can. So my anxiety is tempered by the fact that there are others who have it far, far worse.

My Muse: I don't know where the ideas come from--I only hope they never stop.

My Wife: The last list item you read in a list is the one to which you assign the most importance. Which is why MLW is here. She knew, even before we were married, about the geek trifecta (RPGs, Comics, SciFi/Fantasy), my love of ambient, prog rock, harsh language, and my personality pitfalls. She agreed to tie the knot anyway. I'm thankful for her and for the whole that we've been able to create from our disparate parts. We share the same interests, but we're different. She's the extrovert to my introvert, the chaos theory to my ordered system, the documentary to my action film. She challenges my conventions and can argue circles around me, yet she often believes in me more than I believe in myself. If she were a narcotic, she'd probably fetch a couple g's an ounce. My life was improved by magnitudes the day I met her. In short, I love her.

On the Beach

2005-11-20T23:51:00.000-05:00

Well, I've been back from vacation for almost a week...and I'm ready to go back. I knew when I left that I was going to be in for a major avalanche of work when I returned my job, and in that I was right. But I also expected it to be completed by the end of this week. I was wrong.

Enough "woe is me," though. Before I came back to a perfect shitstorm of work, I was fortunate enough to spend time in the sun of Sint Maarten (or, as it's spelled on the French side, Saint Martin). It was a different kind of vacation then MLW and I would usually take, primarily because we were able to get a place to stay for free. Normally, a "vacation" fo us entails driving hither and yon and/or walking around in some place we've never visited before.

In St. Martin, there's not a hell of a lot to do--hell, they don't even have a music store. So after seeing most of the island over the course of two days (with the notable exception of the port where the cruise ships dock), we did...nothing.

Our routine would work something like this: we'd get up whenever the mini-BG woke up (usually between 8 and 9 in a.m.); we'd have breakfast, then take the baby down to the beach (conveniently located about 30 feet from the back balcony); we'd float about in the sea for the next few hours, maybe pull up some shells, then head back in; we'd read and/or sun while the baby napped; hang around for a few more hours, then go to dinner. After dinner, we'd go through the usual routine with the baby, pur her down for the night and then have some time to ourselves.

That was about it.

Part of this was due in no small part to the fact that the Beach Ghostlette is just over a year old; I doubt she'd going to be up for snorkling lessons at this age. We did take the baby to another beach one day, but since it required so much preparation as opposed to just shuttling her back and forth from the hosue, that we didn't do it again. But aside from snorkling or boating, there's just not a heck of a lot to do. So it was almost like enforced relaxation. I finished the latest book in Robert Jordan's Waste of Time series, which I may review here should I feel like throwing away any more mental energy on it.

However, this will probably be our last flight with the baby until she's a little older. She was actually pretty well behaved, but she required pretty much non-stop entertainment in order to keep her from flipping on the "whining" switch. And that's like being "on" for the better part of four hours. If our little mini-BG wasn't as good as she was, I don't know how we would have been able to cope.

Some other random thoughts:
--You pay a lot to eat rather average food; an exceptional meal is quite expensive. I had what must have been the worst veal parm I'd ever swallowed, the greasy spoon around the corner makes better for half the price.
--For such a small island, there's quite a bit of traffic. If you want to go anywhere outside of where you're staying, a car is practically a necessity.
--There's a sheen on it, but poverty seems to be pretty widespread. And the distance required to go from one end of the spectrum to the other is very short indeed.
--Did I mention that there are no music stores? The best we could do was a natural food store that sold crappy electro mix CDs for more than you'd pay if you bought them at Tower Records.

So while it was nice to get away, I think some place different would suit better next time.

Money, It's a Gas

2005-10-25T08:58:00.000-04:00

I'm kind of amazed, actually.

My blog is worth $564.54.
How much is your blog worth?

I've not looked at the methodology by which they arrived at that number, but I'm wondering if the large blocks of text had anything to do with it. Or if they just really, really enjoyed my Freeport story.

Music Makes the Bourgeoisie and the Rebel

2005-10-20T22:46:00.000-04:00

I gotta say, 2005 is shaping up to be a pretty decent year musically. There have been good to great releases from perennial favorites such as Doves, Beck, Sleater-Kinney, Steve Roach, and The Pernice Brothers, as well as a few acts I'd never heard before this year such as Tarentel, Andrew Bird, and The Decemberists.

Of course, there were a few stinkers as well (=ahem!= Audioslave), but it might actually be difficult to narrow the field once it comes time to craft my top ten.

Speaking of which, a question for the Constant Commenters. Although my number one album is pretty much set in stone (and has been almost since it's release), I'd be curious to read what all of you think stood out this year. For that matter, which slabs of sound really stank up the joint?

Don't be shy! Step right up!

I've Been a Mess

2005-10-17T23:59:00.000-04:00

So, peep this:

A little over a day after I wrote my previous entry, I'm standing on line waiting to place my order for a nutritious lunch. As I'm waiting, I feel a bit of pressure in my right ear, as if some water had slipped in. So I reacted like anyone else would--I stuck in my index finger and wiggled it around. No dice.

When I returned to my desk, I browsed over to WebMd, which confirmed what I was already beginning to suspect: I was showing the early signs of an ear infection. By the time that evening rolled around, it was becoming quite distracting, but nothing too debilitating.

That is, until I woke up on Sunday feeling like I hadn't slept at all. Of course, we had a family function to attend and we didn't get home until evening. I still didn't feel great on Monday, so I decided to stay home. After some "discussion" with MLW, I recognized that it might be a good idea to see a doctor. I already had a scheduled appointment for a full physical, but when I called to move it up I was told that there was a slot later that day. So MLW drove me over.

The doc took a look into the affected ear and declared that it was no wonder I felt stopped up--my canal was completely blocked with wax. Then he proceeded to use a turkey-baster-sized syringe to squirt warm water in my ear. Out came a chunk of ear wax about the size of one of my fingernails. Then he looked into the ear and confirmed that, yes indeed, I had a middle ear infection. Joy!

Armed with some ear drops (which, coincidentally, are in a container the same size as the eye drops I needed for my pink eye--hate to dose myself with the wrong one!), I set back home with MLW and the mini-BG to what I hoped would be the beginning of the road of recovery.

That was last week. I'm just now really starting to feel as if I might be close to symptom free.

With my infection dropping down in the list of maladies my body needed to deal with, my allergies were able to resume their usual place as the only thing I don't like about the fall.

So, give or take a few days, I've not really felt all that well for about a month. Of course, getting more sleep would probably help--something, in fact, that I should be doing right about now.

'Night all.

The Banks of Chaos in My Mind

2005-10-05T00:18:00.000-04:00

By my rough estimate, at least one of the residents of the Beach Ghost Manse has been sick with one illness or another over the past six weeks. That's a month and a half of sneezing, green discharge (from both noses and eyes), coughing, fever, and assorted aches. I don't believe that I've felt physically well for two days in a row over the past two weeks.

The past five days have been all about a sore throat that is only now beginning to abate. And while I had considered myself fortunate to escape from the Pink Eye Fairy with only one eye affected, I was practically despondant when I detected telltale secretions in both my eyes two nights ago before bed. I was taking absolutely no chances and began putting prescription drops in my eyes (again) immediately thereafter. I'll be plopping a few drops into the blinkers every four hours on the regular for the remainder of this week, thank you very much.

Despite this and all the other ephemera associated with having an infant, I managed to finish the first draft of the Bride of the Beast last week. I'm in the midst of the final edit before I send it off to the publisher--almost three months to the day from when I started. It may not work for everyone, but the two 'lines' (out- and dead-) are an almost surefire guarantee of me getting projects done on time.

This is a bit more impressive (from a personal standpoint) when I consider that I went about 25% above what I had stated would be the high end of the word count. Editing will remove some of that chunk, but it will still be longer than I thought it would. Whether it's good or not will have to be determined by the "fans," who I'm sure will shred it for some misappropriation of the Cthulu mythos.

Between the Bride of the Beast and my recent illnesses, I'm ready to take a short mental break. Going off on my own and writing for three or four hours at a clip was simple when it was just MLW and I, but me taking time out to create worlds apart from the one in which I live now requires that she work at keeping the kid out of harms' way and somewhat entertained. I also feel like I've been somewhat disconnected from the world at large--I think taking a few weeks off so I can resurface in the social current is a very good idea right about now.

Plus, I think MLW would enjoy discussing something other than this f'in project.

Of course, I already know what I'm doing next.

Eye of the Zombie

2005-09-13T01:52:00.000-04:00

So, it's almost 2:00 in the morning and I'm still awake, but hopefully not for too much longer.

It started simply enough. The mini-Beach Ghost and My Lovely Wife went off to visit some family for an overnight trip a few weeks ago. The morning after they returned, our little one awoke with her right eye glued shut. And so it was that conjunctivitis came for an extended stay at the Beach Ghost household.

About a week after the Beach Ghostlette first started oozing eye pus, it passed along to MLW's right eye. A few days after that, it moved on to her left. Now, it's my left eye's turn. Truth be told, I'm rather amazed that I held out this long. Generally, if there's an illness that needs a host, I'm usually the first stop.

I thought that I was at the tail end of the infection this evening, since most of my discharge was getting more watery in nature. But when I hit the sack this evening, my entire being seemed to be focused on the fact that my affected eye was getting sticky...and itchy. Couldn't really think of anything else, actually. Ooze and itch, ooze and itch. I'd get up, wipe the eye clean, try it again. Nope, still felt itchy.

So I gave up being nice, and slammed down some drugs. Now I'm just waiting for them to kick in, and then I believe that I'm going to care very little for what my eye feels like. I'm probably going to look and act like some kind of mindless automaton for the majority of tomorrow morning because of it, but that really seems a small price to pay at this point.

Although pink eye is contagious, MLW and I have been doing our diligent best to avoid direct physical contact of any sort with anyone. If we did happen to pass it along, let me state for the record that we are very, very, very, very sorry.

Oh, and by the way, I'd recommend not using Google's image search to look up "bacterial conjunctivitis." A word to the wise...

A House in the Old City, Parts III & IV

2005-09-08T20:03:00.000-04:00

III: A Shot in the Light

Galiard lay back on the roof of an anonymous Scurvytown shanty and waited. He knew his chances of staying alive now that he was back in Freeport were slim if he were to keep trying to hide from Bloody Jack. So instead he was going to kill him.

He’d arrived back in Freeport a couple days earlier. He’d sold his boat, spent a goodly amount of the proceeds on a few sets of clothes that didn’t itch whenever he moved, and used most of the rest to pay for a week’s stay at a decent inn. He holed up in his room so he could rest, plan, and grieve. In the middle of his second night back he knew what to do. He began walking as he put the pieces together, and was on the rooftop across from the Cutthroats’ hideout by the time he was finished. He’d been there since before sunrise, and his muscles were beginning to cramp when Bloody Jack appeared.

The dwarf had an entourage, of course--three or four of his brethren, a rather peculiar looking half-orc with dyed white hair cut flat and almost as many scars and tattoos as skin, and a human walking a few paces behind who was probably a lackey. The halfling assassin wasn’t in sight, which made Galiard a little more relaxed for some reason.

Part of Galiard couldn’t believe it was going to be this easy. The other part told him to get on with it before it got harder. Without taking his eyes off the group, he picked up the already loaded crossbow, sighted along the bolt, took a breath, held it, and pulled the trigger.

The soft chunk of the bolt striking Bloody Jack in the chest abruptly ended the lazy conversation the group had been in the midst of. In the silence that followed, the dwarf took a halting step backward, then gave a small shiver, as if he’d caught a chill. As his companions stared aghast at their stricken boss, still uncertain as to what they should do next, Galiard shot him again.

The half-orc turned at the sound of the crossbow loosing its second bolt and found Galiard as surely as if he had called the creature’s name. Galiard thought he might just have pressed his luck a bit too far, a feeling that was confirmed when the half-orc dashed for the building and began to climb its front wall with his bare hands.

Galiard risked another glance down at the now-panicked group the half-orc had just abandoned and noted that Bloody Jack was now flat on his back, two bolts sticking out of his stocky chest, his heels thrumming wildly into the pavestones as if they were keeping time to a tune only he could hear. Galiard weighed his chances of stopping the half-orc with the single shot he’d have time for before the brute was close enough to rip off a limb and found them wanting. He let the weapon fall and jumped off the rear of the roof to the alley below.

Galiard tried to roll when he hit the ground, and earned a sharp blow to his head for his trouble. He got to his feet to find the street canted at a peculiar angle. He found that oddly fascinating, then considered that it might be wise to get moving. He managed a slow jog at first, which he was able to increase to an all-out sprint when he heard something land in the distance behind him.

It didn’t take long before Galiard crossed into the Eastern District, whose residents actually had jobs they would be expected to show up to. He hoped that his pursuer wouldn’t be dexterous enough to dodge the half-awake masses, a theory that bore fruit when he heard the noise of a rough collision behind him and the surprised epithet that accompanied it.

After a few minutes of running, Galiard began to feel a slight pain in his side that grew to an agony of ache by the time he noticed the looming walls of the Old City rising in front of him. He tried to recall a mental image of Freeport’s first district, and thought he might be able to cut through it, head north through Drac’s End and find shelter in the wilderness beyond—if he could continue running that long.

Galiard knew the approximate direction he needed to head in, but the district was not laid out in a fashion that rewarded those looking for a direct route; its streets tended to meander in a fashion that mimicked water seeking its own level. He decided to risk slowing his pace so he could better get his bearings.

He was scanning the street when a sign caught his attention. It had not been well cared for, and the letters were worn to such an extent that they were barely legible, but to Galiard they were clear as a beacon: Ahlzer Street.

He sprinted down the alley, the stitch in his side forgotten. As he ran he saw similar, smaller placards that matched the age of the street sign, even numbers on his left, odd on his right, starting at 300 and making their way down. 290, 280, 270, 268, 266…262.

He stopped. No 264. He checked the opposite side of the street. 263 and 265.

He didn’t have to check the book, he knew the address. Knew it. But there was no denying what he was seeing. Rather than remaining on the street, Galiard decided to keep moving…and ran toward 262 Ahlzer.

Galiard tried the doorknob, found it locked. He applied a bit more pressure, and the knob turned with a sharp crack. Beyond it was a large parlor with two sets of steps, one going up and the other down. Hooded lanterns lit the entire area, but there was no sign anyone had noticed his entrance. He decided not to push his luck, and headed downstairs.

To his surprise, there were more lanterns lit in the basement, which ran the entire length of the house. It was remarkably well kept, and completely empty. The brick walls had no adornments, there was absolutely nothing on the dirt floor, and there were no exits except for the stairs he had just descended.

He had just taken all that in when he was struck from behind with something hard. When he was able to focus again, he himself lying prone on the dirt floor. He rolled over to discover that the half-orc was bearing down on him. For some reason, the muscular humanoid was grinning.

“Hi there!” The half-orc said gaily as he lifted Galiard by the neck with one hand and proceeded to bash his head repeatedly into the wall. Once again, Galiard’s vision began to waver, and he began to feel a warm trickle leaking from the side of his head.

“Wait,” he managed. “Your boss is probably dead by now. There’s no one to pay you if you kill me. Let me go, and you’ll never see me again. I’ll disappear.”

The half-orc seemed to give serious thought to the matter. Then the grin returned. “Nah. Me am rather just kill you.”

With that, he threw Galiard into the opposite wall with such force that it gave way. Galiard fell to the ground among a small pile of bricks and masonry. He tried to catch his breath, and received a sharp stabbing sensation for his efforts. It appeared that there were a half-dozen half-orcs coming for him, all of them smiling.

Galiard tried to scramble to a seated position, but the debris resisted his efforts. His right hand landed on something solid…and heavy. Meanwhile, the herd of half-orcs was reaching for him.

“Goodbye now,” they said, and Galiard swung at them with what strength he could muster. A blur of bricks caught the multiple half-orcs in the temple, and he was satisfied to see blood flowing that wasn’t his own. Without waiting to see how much damage he’d caused, Galiard threw the brick, which made contact with the half-orc’s eye with a soft squishing sound. The howl that followed, however, was anything but soft.

The last time one of Bloody Jack’s men had tried to kill him, Galiard had counted himself lucky to get away with his skin. This time, he wanted something more. He picked up the fallen brick and slowly wobbled his way over to where the half-orc was clutching at his face.

When it was over, Galiard took a moment to resurvey his surroundings. There was a hole in the wall where he’d been thrown against it, revealing only darkness. He took a lantern and moved in for a closer look. He wasn’t certain what to expect, a hidden tunnel perhaps, but the light revealed something a bit larger than an old passageway: it was another room.

Taking care not to knock any other bricks loose, Galiard stepped into the space, the lantern held out in front of him like a ward against the darkness. The room was smaller than the one he’d just left, and based on the amount of dust he was kicking up it had not seen usage in quite some time. There was absolutely nothing in the room, and no way to exit short of the hole he’d just walked through. Who would build a room without exits? And why brick it off?

A glimmer of metal on the floor interrupted his train of thought. Galiard went to look, and discovered a large iron ring. He went to pick it up, and found that it was attached to the floor. Then he noticed a few fine cracks in the dirt floor, which appeared to form a—

He gave the ring a tug, then again, and once more. Finally, like a sodden cork pulled loose from a bottle, the hatch popped free. Galiard had to scramble backwards in order to avoid having his legs crushed beneath it.

The dust hadn’t even had a chance to settle before Galiard was looking down the new hole. A blast of air rushed up to meet him, stale and foul in a way he couldn’t identify. The lantern showed him yet another room, but this time he couldn’t see walls in any direction. Without giving it another thought, he dangled himself over the ledge, pausing just long enough to make certain that he had a tight grip on the lantern and to gauge the distance to the floor.

The first thing he noticed upon landing was the moisture. The air was thick with it, along with the sound of constant dripping, although he couldn’t actually see where it was coming from. He also felt a great deal warmer. After a moment he realized that he wasn’t getting warmer, it was the book.

The lantern’s light still didn’t reveal any walls, so Galiard simply began walking. As he moved deeper into the space, it became less like a room and more like a gigantic cavern. Stalagmites and stalactites began to dot the floor and ceiling, growing thicker as he continued forward. And the dripping became louder.

What he did notice next was a splintered piece of wood lying on the ground, then a few others. None of which prepared him for the next oddity his lantern revealed.

The ground ahead of him had been cleared of stalagmites. Scattered around the space were the remnants of hundreds of chairs. Many of them had been splintered to bits, others were tossed about randomly and left where they had fallen, and there were a few that had been left standing neatly in rows, as if their owners would be returning after intermission. Somehow, these seemed the oddest of them all.

The majority of the chairs were stacked up against the first wall Galiard had seen since he’d descended into this place. There was no apparent order or sense to the pile, just a conglomeration of wood placed as high as was possible without collapsing in on itself. Many of them had been splashed with—and he knew this without having to look closer—blood.

He moved to the stack of chairs and began pulling them out as randomly as they had been first thrown there. Some of the chairs felt sticky, although that was impossible, there was far too much time had passed for the blood to still be sticky.

With a crash, the heap of chairs came down, revealing another, smaller door. There was no handle to speak of, but there was a hole just large enough to stick a couple fingers in…yet the door looked carved out of solid stone. Chances are it wouldn’t even open.

But it did. Beyond it was a room that looked as if it had been carved from the surrounding bedrock by someone using only their bare hands. Inside were more chairs, boxes, and various other detritus that made moving forward an arduous task.

The sounds of water falling were more insistent now, though there was nothing on the floor. The sounds echoed around the small, cramped space, and the darkness felt as if it were trying to extinguish the intruding light. Galiard had only taken a few halting steps into the room when the door closed behind him.

That was when he began to hear the voice. For a moment Galiard thought maybe he was simply speaking to himself, but when he listened closer he could hear it—feel it—rumbling beneath the waves of droplets that never touched stone. It was murmuring, almost indistinct, but then he began to make out a single word that was being repeated over and over: I.

If the book was warm when he had first descended, it was almost hot enough to burn his flesh now. He reached into his shirt with his free hand and pulled it out. It was giving off a light of its own, and getting brighter. Galiard let the lantern fall to the floor, where it promptly went out. When he placed his other hand on it, the book glowed even stronger.

He started forward once more. He didn’t have much choice really, the book was telling him that that was the direction he should go, that the mystery of its contents was close to being revealed, that there was something in this room that would make him forget everything that he’d worried about, everything that he’d done, everything that he’d lost. All he had to do was keep going.

Galiard’s feet seemed to know where to go without his watching. The room was much smaller than any of the others, and he could see no other way out, yet still he was drawn to the other end. And the voice that was throbbing beneath the sound of the unseen dripping was hinting at hidden things, impossible things, unworldly things.

He reached the opposite end of the room, facing the wall. He knocked at it experimentally—it sounded solid. He had no idea what was next.

And then he looked up.

Although he hadn’t been able to see it when he’d entered, he now saw there was a door built into the wall—right below the ceiling. It was not a door in the strictest sense, as he doubted whether he’d be able to fit his shoulders through it, but it wasn’t really anything else either. Galiard didn’t think that he’d be able to climb up to it. As plentiful as the detritus in the room was, most of it was in such a decayed state that he doubted it would hold his weight.

As if something had been waiting for him to reach that conclusion, Galiard began to rise from the floor. Somehow, this felt completely natural to him. Nothing about this felt absurd to him anymore: the fact that he had gained possession of the book that was even now straining in his hands as if it wanted to be reconnected with a lost part of itself, the fact that he had stumbled upon this place, the fact that he was levitating halfway toward the ceiling in a room that no one had probably entered as long as he’d been alive, it all seemed completely natural. And inevitable.

He had no idea how much time had passed by the time his eyes were level with the door that was not a door; the concept of time itself was becoming a misty ideal. It was also getting a bit harder to see, even though the book seemed to be glowing with an intensity that could blind him. Was it minutes? Hours? A lifetime?

He reached out to pry his fingers into a crack in the wall that he knew would open the door...and paused. He had no idea what he would find when the stone opened before him, but he knew that something was there. Perhaps the something that was whispering to him even now, between the falling drops, and perhaps Galiard was beginning to feel them after all, and perhaps they were coming from him, and perhaps they were sweat and perhaps they were something else. And the voice was becoming clearer as the other sounds and other unimportant things were fading away, and the voice was whispering something about itself, and it made sense, what was being said, he could understand it perfectly now: “I am immortal.”

Galiard suspected that he wouldn’t like what he would find behind the stone, something that had been hidden away these last few centuries, waiting. And he was almost certain that what he saw when he clawed the door open would likely be the very last thing he ever saw.

But he had to know.

IV: An Item in The Shipping News

Bloated Body Baffles Bobbies!
by C.Q. Calame

The Sea Lord’s Guard proved their knack for understating the obvious hasn’t diminished of late. Case in point: the latest floater fished out of Freeport harbor just last week. When asked what had befallen the unfortunate, the Guardsman on duty duly noted, “We don’t know. This one’s different.”
A droll bunch, those Guardsman, and Freeport’s finest! The best money can buy!

A mere glimpse at the victim proves how “different” this particular crime was. Other bodies have had a few claw marks here, a missing limb or two there—the usual. This pour soul was missing his whole head—just for starters! It looks like this unlucky lad had someone (or something) rip open his chest with both hands and take out everything underneath! It was a gruesome sight, and not for the weak of stomach (see etching below).

Tanko Sondek had this to say: “Get that out of my face, Calame, and let me do my job.”

A House in the Old City, Part II

2005-08-29T08:01:00.000-04:00

II: A Month in the Country

The surf was still pounding when he regained consciousness. He slowly came to the realization that he wasn’t dead, he was on solid ground, and he was sweating and shivering at the same time. When he had digested all that, he noticed that standing over him was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen in his entire life. She noticed he was awake, and graced him with a slow smile. Galiard noticed pointed ears poking out from her light brown hair, and then another chill shook him.

“Try to keep still,” she told him, placing a gentle hand on his good shoulder. “My grandmother thinks your wound may be infected.” The shivers hit him harder, and he suddenly felt sick, but it was not from the wound. No, this wasn’t the beginning of new infection, but the end of an old one.

“Not the wound,” he managed to force out through parched lips and chattering teeth, “dust.”

This served only to perplex her. “I do not see any dust.”

Despite his shaking, he managed a wan smile. “That’s the problem.”

There was nothing his hosts could do for his withdrawal, though they did try. The grandmother, who probably had as many wrinkles as she had years, waved her hands over him and muttered a few words in elvish, with no effect. Galiard appreciated the effort, but knew that it wasn’t the presence of poison that ailed him, but the lack of it. He had no choice but to experience every excruciating minute of his withdrawal. And though he felt he’d aged several years by the time it ended, the ordeal in fact lasted only 3 days.

When he was able to stand again, the two women were nowhere in sight. He took advantage of their absence to check his condition. His wound was still tender to the touch, and he doubted that he’d be able to swing his arm in a complete circle for some time to come, but he had to admit that it was mending nicely. Maybe the old elf knew something of the art after all.

By the way his face itched he could tell that he probably had grown the beginnings of a scraggly black beard to match his disheveled hair, and by the way his frame looked he’d probably lost almost a stone’s worth of weight. Still, he felt better than he had since before his memory took a vacation.

Now that he’d regained the majority of his senses, he was better able to judge his surroundings. He was in a small, single-room hut, thatch-roofed by the look of it, with a few scattered pieces of furniture that were probably brought from somewhere else to store what little possessions the two women owned. Quilts littered the remaining floor space not taken up by the furniture, and Galiard was almost abashed that he had been given the only pillow. A piece of treated skin from an animal that he’d rather not identify served as a door. Decadent it was not.

He was not surprised when he saw that the rest of the village was just as sparse. There were a number of huts of similar size to the one he was in arranged in a semi-circle facing an open fire pit and the ocean, which was less than fifty yards off. There was a hut about three times the size of the others, which probably served as a meeting hall, a ten by ten stone shed, probably to store whatever couldn’t be squeezed into the huts, and a modest garden. The only building that looked out of place with the rest of the village was a 30-foot tall stone building that stood outside the village proper. Judging from the arrow slits and the elf walking along its parapets, long bow in hand, Galiard assumed it was a watch tower. Aside from the ocean to its east, the village was entirely surrounded by thick forest.

The elf who’d been at been at his side when he first awoke exited from the garden, her grandmother in tow. He’d been mesmerized by her face, but the rest of her was no worse. Even though she wore some sort of rough-spun brown fabric that looked more like an altered sack than an article of clothing, there were plenty of curves and angles for his mind to fill in the blank spots. She saw him, and the smile that crossed her face dulled the sunlight in comparison. Until he noticed the grandmother, hobbling a few paces behind, had a scowl that left little doubt of her own feelings on their latest arrival. He tried to bury his pleasure at seeing the younger elf, and mostly succeeded.

“Good,” she said as she approached the shack, “you are up. We are about to make dinner. You are probably hungry.”

Galiard decided then that even if he hadn’t been a marked man back in Freeport, he had no intention of leaving this little village anytime soon. “Starving, in fact.”

The smile again. He was transfixed, a flat-footed footpad paralyzed by a medusa’s gaze. The grandmother broke the spell, a few grunts in her own language. It didn’t break the smile, though.

“Grandmother says that if you are able to stand, you will be able to help prepare our supper.” Galiard noticed that she spoke common with the traces of her native language: a lack of contractions and a tendency to draw out the sibilants. Now he was finding everything about her adorable. If he kept this up, he’d have to keep a napkin under his chin to catch the drool.

“I’d be happy to,” he replied, with what he hoped wasn’t too much enthusiasm.

He learned quite a bit over the stewed fruits and vegetables that evening, including her name: Tressa Velaiya. He didn’t ask the grandmother for hers, and the crone didn’t offer.

The elves had originally come from the mainland, and had thought to make a new home in Freeport, but found the pirate city a little too tolerant of orcs and lawlessness, and not nearly in touch with nature to their liking. Given the general scarcity of elves in Freeport, Galiard wasn’t surprised. Instead, they decided that the one of the other islands in the Serpent’s Teeth might serve their needs better, and settled on the windward island. As there appeared to have already been a settlement here at one time, it made moving in all the easier. They’d been here for a little over a year.

“So I take it that tower was here when you arrived?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Odd, you wouldn’t think there’d be many people who’d want to take over this particular patch of ground.” The elderly elf interrupted, and she and Tressa had a quick (for elvish, anyway) side discussion. Galiard caught his name once or twice, and figured Tressa must be filling her grandmother in.

“Grandmother believes that the tower was built not to stop ones from going in,” the younger elf explained, confirming his hypothesis, “but to keep others from coming out.”

Now his curiosity was piqued. “What, is there something in that tower?”

“Not in, but below.”

“I don’t understand.” But he thought he did. Again, she confirmed what he’d already been thinking, that there was an underground complex, which had long been abandoned. But not empty.

“What do you mean? Did you find something?” Grandmother broke in again, and there was more discussion that he couldn’t follow. But by the way the elder elf was shaking her head, it appeared that the two weren’t in agreement. After a few minutes, however, she gave a sigh and went rooting in a trunk. She returned with a package wrapped in fabric, which she removed to reveal a book which was bound in what could be leather, but Galiard strongly suspected it was something else. There were letters carved into its surface in a language he knew he’d never be able to decipher, filled in with black ink that may not have been ink at all. He knew why they kept it wrapped. Without it, the book radiated malevolence.

And he knew then that he would have to look to see what was inside.

As if she could read his intentions, the elder elf rewrapped the book and stashed it in the trunk with a speed he wouldn’t have guessed she was capable of. She mumbled a few words at her granddaughter, which Galiard guessed were something along the lines of ‘See, I told you it was a bad idea.’

The remainder of the meal passed mostly in silence.

Since he was now well enough to eat, it was expected that he would contribute to the maintenance of the village. This entailed repairing roofs, weeding and harvesting the garden, and even taking a few turns in the tower, which turned out to consist of only a single staircase and a room on the ground floor which he was not allowed to enter. On the top of the tower there was a wheel that pulled up a heavy chain. He’d toyed with it on his first watch, and someone had come up to tell him to knock it off soon after. He wasn’t much good with a bow, and said as much, so Tressa was assigned the task of giving him lessons. He had no complaints at all about that.

“No, you are trying to aim too much. Draw the bow, see the target, release. Just so.” Her arrow flew into the heart of the target as if drawn in on a string. “The longer you hold your aim, the more your arm will waver. A few seconds is all you need.”

Galiard attempted it, and watched his shot go off into the woods. They were practicing at the edge of the village, the better to prevent errant shots like he’d been making for the better part of the last few hours from maiming anyone.

“Well, you are getting closer, at least.” She tried to make it sound encouraging. He reached into his quiver and found it empty.

“I’m going to get better at this,” he grumbled, “if for no other reason than to stop chasing after all these damn arrows.” They pulled her shots out of the target, then walked into the woods to see if they could find his.

“You have never mentioned why you were living in Freeport.” She stated as she pulled one of his errant arrows out of a bush.

“No, I haven’t.” He scratched idly at his wounded shoulder as he thought of a delicate way to explain himself. The clothes he’d been wearing when he came ashore wouldn’t have been able to handle the stress of his chores, so he’d been given what they had to spare. As he’d suspected, that turned out to be sacks. He’d mostly gotten used to the near constant itching—except when he thought about it.

He decided that there really was no delicate way. “I thought I was going to be a pirate.”

She didn’t seem surprised. “Yet you are not.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, somewhat abashed. “Turns out I didn’t have the stomach for it.”

She was quiet for a few moments, and he could not see what she was thinking. “To be a pirate is to kill with a cold heart. There are many things I do not know about you, but I do not think your heart is quite so cold.”

He thought she might disagree if he were to explain how abyss dust addicts typically ended their lives, but decided that was a topic better left undiscussed. Instead, he said, “No, I meant that I really didn’t have the stomach for it.”

She looked back at him, puzzled.

“I had no idea what being on the ocean was like. I managed to talk myself onto some buccaneer’s vessel, and was all ready to wave my cutlass and ‘Yarr’ along with the rest of them. And then we weighed anchor. I held it in for a couple hours, and then I lost my lunch on the main deck.”

That earned a laugh. “Well, they weren’t about to turn the boat around on account of a new recruit who didn’t have his sea legs,” he continued. “Maybe they figured that if they kept me on the water long enough, I’d get used to it. Didn’t work, though. So they kicked me off at their next port of call. That just happened to be Freeport.”

“A city on an island.”

“The irony hadn’t escaped me. Anyway, I did my best to put down roots. I found a place to live, a way to earn a living, made a few friends…” He trailed off, not wanting to delve too deeply in a past that was better off forgotten.

She chewed on that for a bit, mentally fitting the pieces of his life story together in an attempt to make a cohesive whole. And probably finding that everything didn’t quite fit. She seemed ready to ask a question, thought better of it, then forged ahead anyway. “There was…someone else?”

“Yes.” He thought of Hana again, the way she could handle a longsword in either hand, how she obsessively patched holes in her leather armor, how eager she was to delve into the depths in search of monsters to conquer and treasure to liberate. Of how her red hair had shone. Of the tender touch of her calloused hands…and how he’d never experience any of it again. “But not any more.”

She told him she was sorry, and he knew she meant it. There seemed to be no way to escape the past, not completely, but you could try to patch over the old memories with fresh ones. Just like holes in armor.

“Anyway,” he said, trying to bring himself back to the present, “I don’t think I ever quite fit into Freeport either.”

She looked at him for a while then, as if weighing another decision. He wanted to mention how thankful he was for her being so accepting, for trying to teach him how to shoot, for not pressing him to reveal what was still too painful. And he wanted more than that, as well. But not if that’s not what she wanted. He managed a wan smile.

After a few more moments, she broke her gaze to retrieve the last of his errant arrows. “Let us see if you can hit the target at least once today.”

And that was that.

The three of them were having dinner a few weeks later when an elf who was older than Tressa yet younger than her grandmother (Galiard would have been hard pressed to be more specific than that) came barging through the hut’s flap. He spoke to the two women in his native tongue for a few seconds, then went back out as quickly as he’d come in. Galiard had managed to pick up a couple words of the language since he’d landed, and ‘outsider’ had been one of the first, since it was usually applied to him. So whatever the elf was so hot and bothered about, chances were good that it either concerned a new arrival or Galiard himself. Neither of the women glanced in his direction after the other elf left, which meant it was someone else.

The grandmother put aside the remnants of her meal on the side table, grabbed a cane, and hobbled out of the hut. Tressa sighed, took another bite of her dinner, and stood as well.

“Something wrong?” he asked.

“Please, finish your meal. We may be gone for some time.” She gave him a brief touch on the shoulder, the first time she’d done so without needing to, and then she went off into the night. He focused on that for a few moments, that touch, imagined that he could still feel the remnants of its warmth through the rough fabric he was clothed in. After a few moments he was able to shake himself from his reverie, and re-focused on his dinner.

Or…he tried to. He was shoveling a mouthful of greens into his mouth when he caught a glimpse of the chest out of the corner of his eye. He made a concerted effort to look back down at his plate, to contemplate the texture of the vegetables as his teeth quickly chewed them into paste. He tried to consider what the gooey mass might look like as it slid down his throat, and decided that it probably most resembled a chest. A chest that contained a book that could have been bound in leather…or something else. A chest that was almost always locked. But it wouldn’t be, this time, would it? Galiard sincerely doubted it. There was only one way to find out.

He tried bring himself back to his plate, but found himself kneeling in front of the chest. He didn’t recall getting up and walking over to the chest, or exactly how long he’d been kneeling in front of it. It seemed like just a moment…

He tried the clasp in front and found that it was indeed unlocked. He grasped the lid at both ends and slowly opened it, trying to prevent the hinges from emitting a tell-tale squeak. The chest was completely empty save for the book, which was still wrapped in fabric, save for a solitary corner that was poking out one side…

Garliard heard a faint whispering from somewhere behind him. When he whirled around to see where it was coming from, he saw only the empty hut around him. Just to be safe, he took a quick glance through the flap. It looked like the entire village was out by the central campfire. A few of them were arguing animatedly at each other, and Galiard once again hoped that he wasn’t the topic of discussion. He looked for Tressa and didn’t see her.

Satisfied, he turned back to the chest, which stood there, its open lid looking back at him like an unblinking, square eye. The book had shifted a bit and its cover was now mostly visible. Galiard guessed that he had probably jostled the trunk in his when he’d whipped about. Hadn’t he?

Pushing his troubling thoughts aside, he reached in and gingerly extracted the book. It was bound in some kind of skin, but Galiard wasn’t able to place it immediately. But he wasn’t taking his chances just to puzzle out what the cover was made of. He opened the book at random.

Inside were horrible, wonderful things. The book was sequenced in what seemed to be a completely random fashion: pages were missing in some sections, sewn in at others. There were copious illustrations, most of which featured a creature Galiard had never seen before. It looked like a giant snake that was moving about upright, with arms and hands. These snakes were portrayed doing a variety of activities; from benign tasks such as harvesting crops and building shelters to more diabolical deeds such as sacrifices and ritualistic mutations. It occurred to him as he was leafing through the pictures, simultaneously horrorstruck and fascinated, that the book was likely bound in the skin of one of those creatures.

He couldn’t understand any of the scribblings that made up the text, yet somehow he got the feeling that what they described would make the illustrations seem inviting by comparison. The scrawls appeared just as random as the rest of the book, and the random splotches of ink and other substances would have baffled anyone who actually understood the language.

As he was flipping toward the end of the book, he found a page that struck a chord. There was an illustration, like a map, of a small city on an island. The town was vaguely circular, and might have been walled. It looked familiar, a place he’d visited before, perhaps. But it looked whoever had drawn the map had selected the part they wanted and skipped the rest. Then it clicked: Freeport, the Old City. It was much larger now, of course, but it had started out small when it was first built.

Next to the illustration was a note, carefully inscribed as if the author had been copying from an original text: 264 Ahlzer. Galiard searched his memory, but neither the number nor the word connected with anything useful. Perhaps it was a calendar notation?

He was snatched from his reverie by a sharp blow to the back of his head. He turned to see the elven crone, who promptly gave him another crack, laced with what were assuredly epithets in her native tongue. He managed a yelp of pain, although it felt somewhat muffled to him, as if coming from someplace distant. Although she had her cane drawn back for a third shot, she paused, studying his face. Then, with a few muttered words, she picked the book up from where he’d dropped it and tossed it back in the chest, which promptly obliged her by slamming shut. And then Tressa came back into the hut.

“Finally,” she said, then noted that Galiard was holding the side of his head. “What happened to you?”

“I slipped.” he answered with a sidelong glance at the guilty party. He decided to change the subject. “What was that all about?”

“A man was caught in the woods near the village.” Galiard tensed. Had Bloody Jack been able to track him down after all? He remembered the rowboat, and thought he might have occasion to use it again soon.

Tressa was still speaking. “He claimed to represent a group of exiles from Freeport who wanted to settle elsewhere. But he was dressed in black robes and had a tattoo on his palm that he tried to conceal. None of us viewed all of it, but what I saw looked like a skull. He asked if his group could join our village.”

“And what did you tell him?”

“We told him no.” The elder elf spoke up for a moment, and Tressa frowned as if her grandmother was bringing up a sore subject. “Grandmother thought that we should not have let him leave.”

“You let him go?”

“Yes, and told him not to return.”

“For once, I’m inclined to agree with your grandmother.” She looked hurt at that, so he quickly continued. “Chances are his friends had no intention of ‘joining’ your village. Why share something you can take by force? They’ll be back, and they won’t be asking nicely next time. Killing him might have made his friends choose somewhere else.”

Her expression changed from hurt to angry. “We are not pirates who kill when the mood is on us. If you are so eager to commit murder, then perhaps you do not belong here either.”

“Now wait a—“ But she was already gone.

He’d intended to explain himself when her blood was no longer up, to tell her that he’d known enough humans to know they’d never live up to the noble ideas the villagers were trying to uphold. And to say that he was sorry, that he didn’t want to lose the only friend he’d had in a long time.

He never got the chance.

The attack came soon after dawn. Galiard had risen early, intending to find where Tressa had spent the night, and had taken less than a dozen steps when the screams began. He could see at least a dozen of them coming out of the woods, most of them armed with crossbows. He wondered idly why they wouldn’t all be armed, but he didn’t have to wait long to find out.

A young elf, whose name Galiard had heard at least a dozen times but never been able to pronounce, ran at one of the unarmed, hooded figures with a dagger drawn. Galiard got a clear view of a tattooed palm as the man calmly grabbed the elf’s wrist to prevent the blow from landing. Then he said a few words that Galiard couldn’t hear and the boy began to bleed. A moment later and he was dead. He hadn’t even had time to cry out.

The tattoo was of the skull and bones…and something else, something above the top of the head that he couldn’t quite make out. But the skull and bones were what mattered. They were pirates, and they weren’t going to be interested in taking prisoners. Although Galiard had never known pirates to be particularly fond of cloaks, especially dark ones that would cause a man to collapse if he were on deck for any amount of time under the naked sun.

Still more of them began pouring out of the forest, and some of the ones with crossbows began taking shots at the guard tower. It didn’t take them long to find the mark.

Galiard was thinking of two items at once. He knew the first one, his boat, was safely tucked away in the forest near the shoreline. He went back to the hut to retrieve the second.

The old crone was standing in the middle of the hut, as if she knew he’d be coming. Her arms were crossed over her chest, and beneath them lay the book. Before he could think of an excuse for running in—like perhaps returning to get a bow—she held the book out to him. And spoke in perfect, unaccented Common. For some reason, he wasn’t surprised.

“I do not think that they are coming for this,” she said without preamble, “but I think perhaps it is better for it to be in your hands than in theirs.”

“Thank—“

“Do not thank me,” she interrupted, “for I am not convinced you are not as evil as they. You walk a knife’s edge, and your next misstep will be your last.”

He had no way to answer that. He had done some things he’d not been proud of, sure, but he never considered himself evil. Not truly, anyway. But he was glad to have the book in any case.

The crone grabbed her staff, which responded to her touch with a flare of magical energy. She looked one last time at him, turned, then turned back.

“Find her,” she told him. “Save her—and she just may save you.”

Galiard followed her out of the tent. The old crone lasted a good minute, and managed to take one of the invaders out, but then she caught a bolt. Then another. He didn’t watch the rest.

By then, the majority of the villagers were trying to organize a fighting retreat into the woods, trading shots with the crossbowmen. Galiard scanned the survivors for Tressa’s face and didn’t see her. Then he heard her voice coming out of the woods from behind them.

“NO!” She was running as fast as she could, stopping only long enough to fire her bow before sprinting forward again. Her shot hit the mark, and most of the pirates quickly took shelter behind some of the huts. If Tressa kept going forward she’d be caught in a crossfire. Galiard quickly ran to intercept her. He knew he wouldn’t be able to hold her back, so he tackled her instead. She writhed under him like a greased wharf rat, drew a knife and probably would have stuck him right in his recently healed shoulder if she hadn’t caught sight of his face first.

“There’s too many,” he told her, “and it’s too late. I’ll take you back—“

“Grandmother?” she interrupted. He shook his head, not wanting to speak the words. She lost her anger, and a lot of her will as well. He tried pulling her up, but she wasn’t helping. The pirates were beginning to poke their heads out.

“We have to go. Now.” A bolt thudded into the earth a few feet away, splashing dirt. This spurred her into motion, slowly at first, but getting faster.

There were still a handful of elves putting up resistance; the best shooters, making good use of cover and their remaining arrows. Galiard ran right past them, heading straight to where he hoped his boat was still hidden. He was in time to see another line of pirates, all of them dressed in those dark robes, break through the trees from the south. Leading them, for there was no question he was their leader, was a buccaneer unafraid to go hoodless. His graying black hair was slicked back straight, and he wore what appeared to be an atomizer on his belt. He was also carrying two pistols.

Galiard pushed Tressa to run even harder, and she complied almost like a freshly animated golem. But not before Galiard had a chance to lock eyes with the pirate leader, and see the man break into a grin. Galiard knew the grin, he’d seen a lot of it in his Freeport days—the grin of a killer. He could almost feel the other man lifting his pistol--

He heard the flash of gunpowder and expected to be dead a moment later. Instead, Tressa cried out next to him and fell to the ground. He quickly checked her, found the tell-tale wound in the back of her leg. He risked a glance over his shoulder, saw the buccaneer calmly ram his pistol into his sash, draw his cutlass, and make for tougher prey. The grin never left his face.

“It hurts,” Tressa managed to whisper.

“I know,” he replied, “but we have to keep going.” Again he pulled her to her feet. She whimpered with pain, but she moved.

Galiard could see the boat as they drew closer to the forest’s edge, right where they’d beached it. He didn’t see the pirate behind the boat; however, until he’d already taken his shot. This time Tressa didn’t even cry out—she didn’t have time.

The bolt would probably have done the trick on its own, but the way Tressa began to spasm as she hit the ground told him it was poisoned. She coughed, spewing out a mixture of blood and froth, and then lay still. It took but a moment, but Galiard felt as though he’d aged a dozen years.

The pirate strode out of the woods, drawing a cutlass. Galiard reached for Tressa’s bow, but it was as broken as its owner. He’d not been smart enough to take a weapon, then he remembered her knife. He searched her frantically, found the hilt. The pirate was taking his time, relishing the thought of his next kill. Galiard didn’t wait, instead hurling the dagger for all he was worth. It caught the marauder in the throat and bit deep. The pirate sank to his knees, looks of shock and understanding struggling for dominion on his face.

Galiard walked over to where the man was kneeling, watched him as he began to gurgle, then calmly grabbed the hilt of the knife and twisted it. He felt something warm coating his arm, but thought nothing of it.

He leaned forward, close enough so that their faces were almost touching. “I’m sorry I won’t be able to join you in the Abyss to watch you burn,” he told him. “Now die.” The pirate drew in a whistling breath as Galiard withdrew the blade; his last exhale was long in coming. Galiard didn’t wait for it. He grabbed the crossbow and the bolts, the latter covered with a sticky substance Galiard couldn’t identify. He’d need them both where he was going.

Tressa’s eyes had already glazed over when he returned to her body. Absently, he stroked her hair, something he’d never had the pleasure of earning when she was alive. His hand left behind bloody streaks. Later, he’d wish that he’d thought to cut off a lock to remember her by. But then it was all he could do to remember to keep living.

No one noticed him as he swiftly dragged the boat from its hiding place and pushed it into the surf; they were too busy looting through the few meager possessions the elves had been able to gather. By the time they saw him rowing he was out of range of their spells and crossbows. He checked the book—it was right where he left it, fitted snuggly under his clothes, its weight pressing against his stomach. It felt oddly warm.

He hadn’t even lost sight of the village when it began to burn.

A House in the Old City, Part I

2005-08-22T08:00:00.000-04:00

A House in the Old City

I: A Little Chin Music

Galiard was beginning to believe that he just might have gotten away with it. And then the halfling tried to kill him.

He shouldn't have been surprised. There were a lot of minor indiscretions that went with the territory when you peddled abyss dust: cutting the product with flour, bumping up the dosage cost for the hardcore addicts who'd sell their own souls for another rush, and ratting out your competition to the Sea Lord’s Guard were all within the bounds of proper pusher etiquette. Using the stuff yourself and then lying to your supplier about the cash shortfall, however, were simply things you did not do. It was an unwritten law, but one you obeyed if you knew what was good for you. This was what he thought Bloody Jack had been trying to impress upon him a few days ago.

"Listen kid," the dwarf had begun when two of his Cutthroats had dragged Galiard in, "you're new to the business. You don't know the ropes yet. You're bound to make a few mistakes. Some mistakes, though, are worse than others. You catch my meaning?"

"Yeah," he'd immediately lied. His time on the job might have been short by Bloody Jack's reckoning, five years, but that was a quarter of the time Galiard had been alive. And given his growing need for the dust, he reckoned that he'd be lucky to make another five. Of course, that was before two dwarfs had broken down the flimsy wooden door to his flop and roughly pulled him out of his fugue state for this little meeting.

"Look at you," the gang leader demanded, "you probably couldn't keep food down now if you wanted to. You're paler than some of the corpses that they find floatin' near the sewers. And you stink worse than most humans. How long you been hooked?"

"I—I don't remember." A half-truth. He'd lost count of the days, true, but he'd never forget the day it started. It was the same old story: boy meets girl, boy loves girl, girl goes adventuring and is torn apart by bodaks. One of her compatriots had brought back the letter she had never gotten a chance to send. He rolled his first dose of dust in it, never bothering to open it.

Bloody Jack came around his desk and strode to where Galiard was sitting. The dwarf reached out and grabbed his underling's drawn face with one of his meaty hands and forced the human to lock eyes onto his scarred face.

"Now, don't lie to me, boy," he said. "I need to know if you have any dust left. If you're smart, you still have some. That way, you can still sell a few doses, maybe put down a deposit on what you owe. You had a hundred doses. What's the value of a hundred doses, Stunty?"

"We been havin' trouble with the shipments, boss," the henchman, a quick-fingered gnome, replied. "Must be two gold each, easy."

"So the way I see it," the dwarf continued, "you owe me two hundred gold. But you can make some of that back, you still have stuff to sell. You do still have some dust left, don't you?"

"Yeah, 'course." Another lie, a big one. He'd 'entered the abyss' almost two days ago, and it'd taken half a dozen doses to keep him there. He had thought of parceling them out, keeping a few in reserve, but why wait?

The dwarf had given Galiard a long, hard stare, his scarred visage looking like a map whose treasure wasn't worth risking the dangers along its path. Galiard hadn't been certain what he was looking for, but it appeared that he hadn't found it. In hindsight, perhaps he had.

"Then I'll expect you here one week from today," Jack stated as he returned to his seat, "but you may want to come earlier, if you finish before then. Consider it…an invitation. And no later than a week. Otherwise, the next time my boys pay a visit, you won't be waking up. Now get out."

So he had. First, he got out of the office, then he picked up what remained of his meager belongings and left his flop behind. He traded those belongings to a dealer with less scruples than himself, and then Galiard did his best to drop out of existence.

Aside from the few hours a night he allowed himself to sleep, he kept in constant motion. He tried to stay out of Scurvytown as much as possible, but he became much more familiar with the other parts of Freeport. During the day he would walk the streets of the Merchant District, where the residents would scarcely deign to notice someone of such obvious lower social stature. He’d even been able to land a few coins from the jaded rich who simply assumed that he must be there to beg. While the sun was near its daily peak, he’d shift to the Old City and dodge the rays beneath the shifting shadows of the city wall, then see if he could scare up a bit more coin as the councilors and other well-placed members of the government headed back to their homes. At night, he would haunt the rowdier sections of Drac’s End, the Eastern District, and the Docks, always on the look out for sailors who were either deep enough in their cups to offer a mug to an “old friend” or unwary enough not to notice their purse strings getting cut. In the waning hours of darkness he would crawl to an alley in the Warehouse District for a brief rest, and a few hours in the Abyss if he’d been particularly lucky.

Initially, it was a difficult adjustment for him. As a pusher, he had to be aggressive in order to keep a steady influx of new customers. Now, he had to make himself invisible. He’d had practice hiding shadows before, of course; the Sea Lord’s Guard might not make frequent sorties into Scurvytown, but they did make them. And it was always better if you didn’t stand out when they did. Still, it was one thing to avoid four noticeably armored guards, quite another to remain anonymous when any stranger might be working for the person you were trying to avoid.

Yet it was not the first time he’d had to alter his personality to suit circumstances.

Despite the relative monotony of his new hand-to-mouth existence, the time passed quickly. One day bled into the next to the point where it was impossible to tell them apart. If he’d had to guess, he might have ventured that it had been over a month since his meeting with Bloody Jack, and the fact that he’d not yet woken to a slit throat emboldened him a bit. Which was why he’d never suspected the halfling.

It had been night, and not exactly a successful one at that. He’d been haunting the Docks for the last few hours, but most of the sailors were sullen and sober. There were rumors of war coming from the mainland, and talk that the pirate city might stay out of it. It had to do with something about there not being a new Sea Lord, or some other political nonsense that made Galiard’s head hurt if he thought about it too much, so he went on his way instead. He’d decided to pack it in early when he’d heard someone clear their throat behind him.

“Pardon me,” a polite voice had inquired. Galiard turned to see the halfling, who was wearing a rather natty suit on his diminutive frame and a sheepish look on his face. “Could you perchance direct me towards the Diving Fin?”

“Sure,” he’d replied automatically, turning his back to the gentlemen in order to point the way, “the Merchant District is right over—” The rest of his sentence was sucked back into his lungs as several inches of cold steel were driven into his waist. Enraged, Galiard spun ‘round once more, his dagger drawn.

“That’s the last mistake you’re ever going to make, half-man,” he warned.

The halfling was unimpressed. “Mmm…I should think not,” he replied.

Galiard was about to prove him wrong when a second wave of pain rippled through him. Poison, he realized. He had to fight it, take care of this meddler, get to safety. He went to raise his dagger, and found that he couldn’t move his arm. Or his legs. Or…anything.

“That’s much better,” the halfling said after a moment. “You are the dust dealer, yes?”

“Mmmph,” he replied.

The other took this as assent. “Bloody Jack sends his regards. No do us a favor and go to sleep.”

With that, he kicked Galiard’s feet out from under him. He landed on his back, and his head slapped onto the street with an audible crack. Galiard had just enough time to notice that there seemed to be more constellations in the sky then he remembered, and then all the stars faded out at once.

His stomach informed him he was in a boat long before his other senses were able to catch up. He’d not set foot in a vessel since he’d landed in Freeport, and he had never intended to do so again. It was just his luck that he would die in the one place he wanted most to avoid, the one place he had been forced to see almost every single day: the open sea.

When he opened his eyes, he saw his assailant sitting in the prow, smoking a pipe and wistfully staring out into the night. Galiard found that he was lying in the bottom of a rowboat that was only a foot or so longer than himself. His wounded head throbbed in time with the beat of his heart, which didn’t do much to quell his intestinal distress. His hands were bound together, but his legs were still free. Even so, he didn’t think he could stand if his life depended on it, which it almost certainly did.

The lights of the city were nowhere to be seen.

The halfling didn’t turn to face him, but it was clear he knew his charge had regained consciousness. “I don’t know what you did to get on Bloody Jack’s bad side, but it’s a rare thing for me to get a visit from the Cutthroats. Oftentimes we work at cross purposes. Still, his coin is as gold as any other. More’s the pity for you.”

“Why did you bring me out here,” Galiard asked.

“If I finished you in town, chances are they’d find your corpse, and some nosy detective would want to raise you. I’ve enough trouble without Kovac poking about in my affairs. Out here, you won’t be found, you won’t be raised. Especially once you’ve been cut up into pieces the fish will find palatable.”

“That’s comforting.”

“Mmm,” the assassin agreed as he banged his pipe against the side of the skiff. “Well, enough talk. It’s a rather long row back, and there’s much work still to be done.” The halfling stowed his extinguished pipe in an inside coat pocket, drew his dagger, and advanced toward him. His stomach protested the lack of equilibrium caused by the approaching footfalls, and it was then that Galiard grasped his one chance of getting out of this encounter alive.

The assassin grabbed his hair and forced his head back, exposing his throat to the approaching steel. “This will only take a moment,” the halfling assured him.

Galiard opened his mouth as if to scream…and let loose with a torrent of vomit that struck his assailant directly in his face.

The halfling drew back with a yelp of disgust, and Galiard immediately drew his legs up to his chest and drove both his feet into his opponent’s chest. The killer was driven hard into the prow, but did not go over. More distressingly, he still held tight to his dagger. The assassin wiped his face with his hand, exposing a visage that had exchanged its previous composure for a look of pure rage.

Galiard tried to get to his feet before the halfling came at him again, then settled for his knees instead. He managed a tenuous grip on an oar blade resting in the bottom of the boat and swung it as hard as he could. The narrow end caught the halfling on the side of the head, but still he would not go over. As the assassin came at him again, Galiard tried once more to gain his feet, thinking to meet the charge with one of his own. Instead, he stumbled in his own recently evacuated effluent, causing him to slip forward. Fortunately, he still had his hold on the oar, which collided firmly with the halfling’s forehead with a loud thump. This staggered the halfling, who took one halting step, another, then finally fell overboard.

Galiard rushed forward at once and peered over the side to make certain his assailant wasn’t attached to the side. A flicker of light off the surface of the flung dagger was all the warning he had before it buried itself in his left shoulder. He swung the oar at the water with what strength he had left, and connected with something, whether water or flesh, hard. He didn’t wait to find out. He clumsily forced the oars into their locks, and pulled for all he was worth, aggravating his wound with every stroke.

When he finally stopped long enough to pull out the blade and cut through his bonds, he noticed that his entire side was slick with blood, which was still coming out of his wound in a steady trickle. Too caught up in his own fear to notice before, he now found himself light-headed and weak. He bound the gash with the few still still-dry strips of shirt he possessed, which helped somewhat, but even without his injury he’d be hard pressed to stay alive in the midst of the ocean without food or water. But where to go?

The moon revealed only darkness and more darkness. But, off in the distance…Galiard thought he could see a large shape, darker than its surroundings. Was it land, or some new horror to face? In the end, he decided that it would be better to face the quick death of the unknown then the slow death of dehydration. So he rowed.

His improvised bandage didn’t last long against the continual stress he was putting on his wound, and it was soon just more strips of saturated cloth. Yet he rowed on.

By the time the sun began to rise, Galiard knew that his chances of surviving through the day were slim. The dark shape he’d seen hours before became a lighter shape, and then revealed itself to be an island. There was no harbor in sight, no sign of civilization in fact, but it was solid ground. He’d lost most of his range of motion sometime in the last hour before dawn, but he pulled the oars with what remained of his strength.

His vision had just begun to double when he heard the sound of waves breaking on sand. He gave a last pull, and then, for the second time in less than a day, passed out.

Words

2005-07-25T06:41:00.000-04:00

Creation of the Bride of the Beast has been going swimmingly well--I've finished the first third of the plot. Once again, it is due in no small part to having created an outline beforehand.

Now, I have no idea where I am in terms of actual number of words. I suspect the plot's second third is going to be the lengthiest. But I'm currently running way ahead of where I had scheduled myself to be. Granted, I had only scheduled myself to be writing about 1,000 words a week, but still...

In other news, the author of the books from which the mini-Beach Ghost received her name has responded to my e-mail regarding the name's etymology. (As always, specific details have been removed to give the little cutie some privacy.)

As for the origins of the name, alas, so far as I know I just made it up. [Character's sister's name] was created first, and given a hard, sharp, two syllable name that seemed to fit her brusque and sharp-edged personality. I wanted something softer and more feminine for her sister, to underline the differences between the two girls, and [name of mini-BG] seemed to have the right sound to it.

So, straight from the horse's mouth, as it were.

And now, to prepare for the day ahead...

Caught by the River

2005-07-05T23:42:00.000-04:00

Boy, time slips away, doesn't it?

By the way, it's now official: I'm once again a cog in the corporate machine. I received an offer letter last week, which I accepted. The money we'll be saving simply by no longer paying COBRA made the answer an easy one. As is almost needless to say, that's quite a load off at the Beach Ghost household.

In other news, I'll be steering the good ship USS Creativity into some familiar waters, for a project that I will henceforth be calling Bride of the Beast. Work on the Bride will be shoehorned into those spare moments when I am not working my straight job or staying connected to my family.

What this means, you constantly refreshing readers (to brutalize a phrase), is that the ole 'blog is going to be demoted to third fiddle status. Updates, sporadic as they've been of late, will become even more so. As it is, I should be putting the finishing touches on the Bride's outline instead of attempting to string together sensical sentences here, but thought a formal "see ya later" would be appropriate.

Be well all, and I'll be back in three months at the latest.

Oh, and if you're looking for another musical recommendation (given how ridiculously spot-on I was with Sleater-Kinney) you could do worse than spending your dour-lyrics-with-a-healthy-pop-sheen dollar on the Pernice Brothers latest. Favorite song of late has been "Saddest Quo." But you should really here it for yourself.

Heartbeat Props

2005-06-18T08:37:00.000-04:00

This week has also been notable for something other than the waves of illness that have been breaking over Beach Ghost Central: the mini-BG went back to the hospital for her second check-up since her surgery.

The news continues to be good. The pressure gradient in her heart had decreased slightly (which is a good thing), but not so much that the cardiologist would call it a trend. Still, this means that the tumor remnant isn't interfering with her heart function and is probably either not growing at all or growing at such a slow rate that the growth of her heart is outpacing it.

It may be needless to note it, but both MLW and myself are pretty happy with the results.

Her next check-up is in 3 months.

Stone Cold

2005-06-14T23:05:00.000-04:00

What's better than coming down with a cold? Coming down with a cold in the middle of a heatwave.

The mini-Beach Ghost decided to bequeath me an early Father's Day present (which she got for half off from MLW), which has reduced my mental capacity to about an eighth-grade level. (Jokes about how this is a slight step from my normal mental state will be summarily ignored, thangyewverymuch.)

It's not often that I come home after work and say to myself, "Gee, I think I want to spend the next 4 1/2 hours sitting on the couch watching TV." But that's what I was reduced to.

The Beach Ghostlette, on the other hand, didn't seem to be disturbed in the slightest by her own bout with the bug. Go figure.

We Will Rock You

2005-06-04T22:58:00.000-04:00

Have you been wondering lately if there are any albums out there that truly rock? And I don't mean "rock" in any of the current, conventional senses. Not in the 'wink-wink nudge-nudge,' ironic sense, where you and the band both know that neither of you are taking this whole 'rock' business too seriously. Not that kind of rock that simply absorbs what you dug about classic rock and regurgitates it without any of the risk that made the original music so inviting. And, in the name of all that is holy, certainly not in the sense of yet another pop-punk band who refuse to deviate from the blueprint Green Day* established in the '90s.

If you've been on the look out for an album that rocks--loudly, unabashedly, and without a trace of irony--than the women of Sleater-Kinney would like a word with you.

Now, I'll throw out the caveat that I've been a big fan of the band's since I bought an album of their's for the first time in 1997. Their 2000 album, All Hands on the Bad One, ranked #1 on my top ten list for that year. But their latest, The Woods, is such a tremendous pay-off to the evolutionary process they've been working towards as a band that it threatens to forever eclipse the rest of their catalog.

And while MLW has long since grown tired of my constant praise of their work ("Is that woman still singing?"), many beach ghost readers will probably find a post on this topic below their pain threshold.

The Woods distinguishes itself from the rest of the Sleater-Kinney catalog in the first second of its running time, as "The Fox" opens with a blast of feedback that announces the heaviest song they've ever done. But the real laying down of the musical gauntlet occurs a couple songs later, in the middle of "What's Mine is Yours." The song disguises itself as a blues stomp for about half its running time and then Carrie Brownstein rips into a solo that is soon given the full Hendrix treatment--phasing, distortion, even segments played backwards. That someone would even attempt such an obvious homage is pretty gutsy. It doesn't hurt that she also manages to pull it off.

But Ms. Brownstein's isn't alone in achieving new heights in her musical prowess, as her bandmates have also risen to the occasion. Janet Weiss pummels the drums with such force she sounds like Bonham resurrected and Corin Tucker shrieks out a number of lyrical lines with the intensity of Plant.

It is also one of the loudest albums I've heard in recent memory (outside of metal, perhaps). I'm talking you-can't-listen-to-it-at-full-volume-on-your-headphones loud. I'm talking your-ears-will-actually-hurt-after-playing-it loud. But when a song like "Rollercoaster" kicks into full gear, you'll want to hear it loud.

Now, I'd be remiss for not mentioning that detractors will find aspects of this album that they will not care for. For one thing, there's the intentional distortion which permeates the album and, if you aren't expecting it, will have you checking your speakers. This is true even on 'softer' songs like "Modern Girl." And those who don't care for singing with a heavy dosage of vibrato will not at all be enamoured of Ms. Tucker (the quote from MLW was directed at her).

So--if you want an album that hearkens back to the days where bands created "classic rock," without a whiff of nostalgia, then you should investigate The Woods immediately.

For a wee sample of just what I'm talking about, take a look at their latest video.

* - Yes, the referenece to Green Day is intentional. Pop-punk has, IMHO, about as much in common with actual punk than ambient has with Scandanavian death metal.

It's My Choc-o-late Attack

2005-05-25T23:09:00.000-04:00

Then there are marketing wonks who know exactly what they're doing. Witness, for example, those evil, evil folks at Apple. One of their new iPod ads feature a plethora of rollerskaters and a teaser of what sounds like a really kewl tune.

The song, for those of you who have some inhuman ability to resist a good hook, is "Feel Good Inc." by the Gorillaz. Which, of course, is available to download from iTunes. And thanks to a promotion from one of our fine megacorps, I did just that...for free. And have now listened to said tune approximately 5,000 times.

Like a lot of good pop, the tune is simplicity itself--strictly an A-B-A-B-A pattern. The tune opens with manaical laughter that could have been lifted from "Crazy Train" or perhaps the end of Crimson's "Easy Money." Then we get hit with the bass-heavy hook and the lyrical "theme" (the precise nature of which is impossible to discern, given the casual (read: incomprehensible) vocals), which seques into a rather lovely acoustic guitar section (backed with some well-timed keyboard washes). Then we're back to the hook, only this time the rather lackadaisical vocal is replaced with a rap from an unrecognizable De La Soul that is sure to please the hardcore hip-hoppers.

Then it's lather, rinse, repeat.

Unfortunately, there are a couple downsides. Not for the song itself, mind you, but rather its marketing.

First, and it may not be common knowledge at this juncture, but Gorillaz have actually made a video for the song. I've seen it, and was particularly taken by the Miyazakian aspects of the animation. However, the first image that's going to pop into my head whenever I hear the hook for the song is a trio of headbanded rollerskaters on a blue background. So Gorillaz (or, more likely, their label) may reap some financial benefit from the cross-promotion, Apple ultimately gets to play the trump of forever having the music associated with their brand.

Even worse (from Gorillaz POV, at least) is the fact that there is currently an overview of their just-released album available for free download via iTunes. After perusing said overview, I realized that the new album would have about as many songs that I would enjoy as their first did. Which is to say, one.

To sum up, Apple manages to raise my interest in a song, which I then download for the cost of a soda I would have purchased anyway from a site owned by Apple. In the process I determine that I need spend no further money on the band's full-length work.

So...who do you think is getting the better deal?

Two Hundred Dollars Straight In

2005-05-10T08:40:00.000-04:00

Work on the next part of my Springsteen dissertation continues at a snail's pace; in the meantime, I'm absorbing his latest.

My only comment on the work thus far isn't related to the music. Rather, I find it hi-lar-ious (sic) that the song "Reno" got tagged with a warning ('This Song Contains Some Adult Imagery') for this lyric:

Two-fifty up the ass

Yet there's no parental warning sticker for the f-bomb he drops on another song.

And speaking of the "F word," a big middle finger to the marketing wonks at Columbia Records who deemed it necessary to usher in their new "DualDisc" format by creating a new CD case that is destined to break in short order. Thanks for that, folks.

Hearts Can Be That Way

2005-05-01T10:47:00.000-04:00

I realized, in the midst of my rather protracted ramblings about music, that I hadn't presented an update on the Beach Ghostlette since the end of our ordeal in March. Rest assured, this is a good thing. (Not the lack of updates, but the lack of anything to report.)

In fact, our little bundle of joy recently went back to the hospital for a 6-week, post-op check-up and was pronounced in fine shape. Her doctor advised my wife that mini-BG's heart would never be featured in "Playboy for Hearts" (a rather interesting concept in itself), and that any doctor who wasn't familiar with her case would mistakenly believe that there was something wrong. Something we'll be keeping in mind, to be sure.

The baby also had to be fitted with a monitor for a 24-hour reading of her heart rhythms, which also turned out a-ok.

And the news keeps getting better and better. A couple weeks ago we started mini-BG on solid foods, and she has taken to it like a duck to water. She even grasps the concept of opening her mouth and not sticking out her tongue. So she's also putting on weight at a steadier rate.

What else? She's generally jolly, sleeps through the night (a few random interruptions aside), and is one of the highlights of my day--every day.

And now, a question for the 'blogosphere: I have two potential topics that I'm thinking of blathering on about for my next entry. One is the long-delayed second part of my Springsteen dissertation. The second is about Poland.

What say ye?

Mother Stands for Comfort

2005-03-06T21:45:00.000-05:00

It seems like I've been away for eons. Sitting in a hospital, doing nothing but waiting, gives you a unique perspective on time--you are so bored that every minute takes forever, yet a day passes before you can blink. I had it easy, for I at least was able to go to work and keep my mind occupied; MLW got to experience just about every excruciating second of the mini-Beach Ghost's stay.

And, believe me, parts of it were excruciating. When I wrote in my previous entry that her first night out of surgery was the roughest that was true--at the time. The actual, honest-to-goodness roughest night was last Saturday, when she was beginning to be weaned from the medication.

In the middle of the night she began to struggle out of the medically necessary stupor she'd been plunged into. This led to a little coughing, a little crying, and a little...chest popping.

Yup, that's not a typo. Whenever she took in a deep breath, or coughed, or gave a particularly lustful cry, her chest would...pop. You could hear it from a couple feet away and, worse yet, you could feel it. Of course, this started happening at around 3 o'clock in the morning, so needless to say there was nothing we could do about it. Not that we didn't try. We managed to get the Fellow on staff to take a listen. We soon found out why this particular Fellow was working the graveyard shift, because he quickly pronounced that "he'd never heard anything like this before." I informed the man that that was precisely what we didn't need to hear at that moment. Since the issue didn't appear to be emergent, nothing was done at that point.

What we were able to find out on Sunday was the Beach Ghostlette had probably loosened one of the stitches that were holding her sternum together. What we found out on Monday, after they had performed a second operation to fix the problem, was that it was also causing her a considerable deal of discomfort. Fortunately, the period to get her back to where she was before she had to go under the second time was considerably shorter.

One thing that MLW discovered would ease the baby's evening discomfort was getting into to the bed with her and holding her. Unfortunately, they'd transferred the baby to a "climbing crib," so MLW had to squeeze herself into something that was only four feet long. I'd think it funny, if not for the underlying pathos of it: our girl was out of sorts and just wanted to be comforted.

From there, things have steadily improved. The mini-BG came home on Thursday afternoon and has slowly begun reverting to her usual, jolly self. The only noticable change, aside from a slightly quicker tendancy to go from calm to Warp Factor Cranky at the drop of a hat, is her tendency to eat even more. Even this is good news, as she needed to up her intake anyway.

A couple weeks before the surgery was scheduled, the Beach Ghostlette's cardiologist was discussing the process with MLW and noted that children receive an amnesiac with their anesthesia so that they don't remember anything about it afterwards. But, he said, he wished that they were able to prescribe them to the children's parents, as they were the ones who really could use it.

I, for one, heartily agree.

Quick is the Beat of my Heart

2005-02-26T11:25:00.000-05:00

The fateful day has come and passed. I am typing this entry from the Intensive Care Unit of the hospital where the mini-BG is being treated. Yes, you can even surf the Web from inside a hospital room--and on a wireless keyboard no less.

All of which is, of course, secondary to the reason MLW and I are here.

Based on the evidence of the past couple days, I'd have to say that it appears the Beach Ghostlette has the same constitution as her mother (16 / +3 bonus). I dare say that I probably would not have held up quite so well--hell, a bout of intestinal distress knocked me on my ass for two days.

MLW and I arrived at the hospital around 6:15 am on Wednesday and had to relinquish the baby outside the operating room at around 7:30. Then...we waited. Although we were told ahead of time that the mini-BG would only be on bypass (read: her heart would not be beating) for only a half-hour at the most, getting to and from that point would take around 4 hours. I think it was a bit longer than that, but eventually the anesthesiologist emerged to tell us that the surgery was complete. We spoke to the surgeon a few minutes after that, and he informed us that he had removed a portion of the tumor about the size of two thumbs placed together. This was sent to pathology for analysis, which confirmed what we had suspected: fibroma. Which meant that the chances of it subsiding on its own were small.

It took almost another hour for a bed in the ICU to become available (like most hospitals, space is generally at a premium; it's like the axiom about traffic always expanding to clog freeways, regardless of how many lanes are added), and when we finally got to see her she was splayed spread-eagle on a bed that dwarfed her by a considerable margin, each limb and orifice (including a few new ones in her chest) displaying a tube or wire of some sort or another. It makes for a lengthy litany: two metal leads attached to her heart that could be plugged into a pacer, a chest tube to drain excess fluid, a couple shunts that allowed the docs and nurses to inject medication to her recently repaired muscles, arterial shunts, a blood pressure cuff, a catheter, a ventilator, and--perhaps the ultimate indignity--a rectal thermometer kept in place with tape.

The first night was her roughest. Her heart was beating over 200 times a minute when she was placed in her room, and remained in the high 190s throughout the night. It was during this period that we realized what a precarious house of cards the recovery period is. The drugs they give to stabilize one system can adversely effect other systems if not given in the right doses. So the staff had to monitor her heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen saturation percentage, urine output and so on and so forth, ad infinitum. We were able to get to sleep that night--mostly due to exhaustion--but the night was far from restful.

Fortunately, things have improved considerably since then. This morning her chest tubes were removed, and there is even talk of taking her off the ventilator later today.

But was it worth it? Although my logical brain realizes that this was definitively the course we needed to take, my doubting Thomas side still wants to probe the wound--I want to see that her heart is now more "normal," and that the tumor won't decide to stage a comeback, and that we didn't put our daughter (and ourselves) through all this trauma for nothing.

Meeting Across the River

2005-02-21T18:07:00.000-05:00

So this past Wednesday MLW and I took the mini-BG to the hospital where she will be undergoing her operation in a few days for her final pre-surgery visit. It was a jam-packed day that went something like this:

8:00 ish -- Arrival
Pre-admittance paperwork
Chest X-ray
Echocardiagram
EKG
Consultation with surgeon
Tour of O.R. intake, pediatric ICU, and "step-down" area
Blood test, 1st attempt.

This was, without a doubt, the worst part of the day. Since the mini-BG is, in fact, mini, the phlebotomist had a wee bit of difficulty locating a vein. And by "wee bit of difficulty," I mean that she fished around in the Beach Ghostlette's arm with a needle for a good couple minutes. Now, I'm sure that most 3-month-olds will lie perfectly still and like nothing better than to have something jabbed into their flesh, but our little daughter was just a smidgen less understanding.

Actually, she howled as if her limb was being sawed off. This was no "I believe I may desire something to eat" cry or a "I'm feeling somewhat run down" cry. Nope. This was a lung-emptying scream of pain and anger. And it wasn't as if we could reason with her. 3-month-olds are not real big on such concepts as 'necessity' and 'temporary discomfort.' Finally, MLW asked the nurse to give it up (okay, she didn't really ask, but I think most readers can get a sense of what I mean). After a few more emotional minutes, it was agreed that we'd try again in a little bit. So it was...
Break time. A couple diet sodas, a few calls to check messages, a little time to calm down the little one.
Blood test, 2nd attempt. More howling, but a different phlebotomist was able to tap a vessel her first shot out of the box. A minute or so later, and mini-BG was bandaged and ready for the final event of the day.
Nurse meeting. This was a "getting to know your baby's vitals" meeting, where the baby was poked and prodded in a generally less invasive fashion. Her ears were looked at, her heart listened to, and her snots were removed (via saline solution in the nostrils, causing still more howling).

For the most part, we never had to wait too long for any one activity, but the time added up just the same. By the time we pulled out, it was about 2:30 pm, and we'd been at the hospital for over 6 hours.

Since we'd not eaten the entire day in an effort to compress the day somewhat, we were both famished. We stopped off at one of NJ's myriad diners and I had what may have been the worst helping of onion rings I've ever tasted. It didn't matter--I was worn out, hungry, and was in no mood to complain or count carbs.

The baby, who had done a fair amount of sleeping during our visit, napped for over three hours straight. Mom and Dad were only too happy to join her for a nap of their own.

My next entry will probably be late this week, when everything has become clearer.

Did Ye Get Healed?

2005-02-12T10:59:00.000-05:00

So, the date for surgery has been set: February 23rd.

Although (let's face it) I'd rather it not be necessary for me, MLW, and the mini-BG to endure this, I am at least somewhat heartened by the fact that the hospital we'll be taking her to did some lovely--and more complex--work on this little fellow.

Heart in the Hand of the Matter

2005-02-09T15:30:00.000-05:00

First off, a whole boatload of thanks to the folks who were inspired to comment on my last entry, making it the most. commented. entry. evar. This is probably going to be a slow-burning issue, as there are a lot of irons in the fire at present. Especially given the ever-changing condition of the mini-Beach Ghost.

The latest news on that front has been both good and bad. The good: she didn't need to have a second MRI, as they would have had to anesthetize her on this occasion, something they don't like to do unless they positively have to. She did have a CAT scan, which pretty conclusively (remember, nothing is ever 100%) eliminated the posibiliity of the growth being malignant.

The bad: the tests have shown that the obstruction of bloodflow from her heart has not improved. While this doesn't constitute an immediate emergency, it is unfortunately something that can only be treated surgically. At this point, we don't yet have a definitive date as to when we'll need to take her in, but it will probably be toward the end of this month or the beginning of the next.

I'm of two minds about the prospect of my three-month-old being opened up for major surgery. On the one hand, just thinking about what the surgery will entail is enough to keep me up nights. On the other, once she has come out of surgery, the Beach Ghostlette should be free of any heart complications. Should, of course, being the opeartive word.

More as details become available.

Mystery Achievement

2005-01-20T23:37:00.000-05:00

Most of the time, I enjoy my job. Although this would seem to be stating the obvious (why stay at a job you don't enjoy?), I've worked at enough places to know that this is never guaranteed. I enjoy the fact that my responsibilities encompass a wide range of different tasks. I genuinely like the majority of the people with which I work. Best of all for me, the money is quite good and the commute is literally walking distance.

As far as I know (and I probably would have been made aware of this awhile ago if this wasn't the case), the way that I handle my job is well respected. This is evidently no small feat, as there are quite a number of divergent personalities on the managerial level and I have had to deal with each of them in one way or another. In fact, I was assigned to a project that was already in process so that I could act as liaison between the project manager and a particularly "difficult" client.

There's only one issue, but it's turning into a doozy: I'm a consultant.

Consultant, for those not versed in CorpSpeak slang, is simply a dignified title for a temporary employee--which is, in essence, what I actually am. Becoming a consultant was not a planned step in my career evolution, which is probably why I've been one for the better part of the last three years.

Up until last year, I wouldn't have even made the distinction between consultancy and full-time employment. The categories were a heck of a lot broader a few years ago: either I was working or I wasn't. But the distinction became a lot more important once I knew that MLW was pregnant for one reason and one reason only: health insurance. This became an even more important consideration once MLW was laid off from her job and we faced the prospect of having to pay COBRA.

Now, I'm not about to begin crying poverty--I'm paid relatively well for my job--but paying for COBRA currently eats approximately 25% of my net pay. You read that right: twenty-five percent. And, in the (unlikely) event that MLW or I haven't procured full-time employment by the time COBRA runs out, we'll end up paying even more for private insurance.

I had begun speaking with my boss about the possibility of being converted to a full-time employee last year. And though it was not something that we discussed on a weekly basis, it looked like the conversion was on track to happen this month...until it wasn't. The reason was that old saw that gets trotted out when any business expense doesn't get paid: budget restrictions.

As much as it will pain me to do it, it may well be time for me to pull up my stakes and move on. The birth of the Beach Ghostlette was not a surprise at my workplace, nor was the importance I placed on receiving healthcare, and a portion of me feels as if the purse-string holders weighed the options of going over budget or potentially losing a good employee and chose the latter. And it not only costs me some dosh to pay for COBRA, but every day or half-day I have to take to mind the mini-BG (as was the case the majority of last week) cuts into that week's paycheck.

I realize, of course, that this probably comes across as so much whining. Companies don't exist to provide me with employment, things are tough all over, I'm lucky to have a job, blah blah blah. But simply getting a portion of the package really isn't sufficient anymore; I feel I've earned the right, not simply because I've put in the time but because I've actually proven my value.

More on this as events warrant (and readers tolerate).

Next: The worst of the best of 2004

Wave of Mutilation

2005-01-11T23:24:00.000-05:00

I've not much to add that hasn't been better said elsewhere about the awesome and awful havoc created by the tsunami in December. A friend of ours noted how becoming a parent changes the way you view news stories (which are almost always tragic) involving children. It's true, and the fact that many parents have had their children taken from them is more distressing to me now than it ever was previously.

If, by some chance, you haven't decided whether or not to send your hard-earned for the relief effort--please do so. There are plenty of organizations that are helping, and plenty of places that list those organizations. Heck, there's even a 'blog.

The Gene Genie

2005-01-11T11:10:00.000-05:00

More good news on the baby health front. MLW received a call from the geneticist, who had taken a sample of the Beach Ghostlet's blood a few days after she was born in order to determine if she had any markers for Tuberous Sclerosis. She doesn't.

Of course, this was couched to MLW as not 100% guaranteeing that mini-BG doesn't have the syndrome. Which, to me, translates to "Well, there is still the possibility that we screwed the pooch and read the report wrong," or "Of course, your daughter's genes may decide to begin spontaneously, randomly mutating on their own." In other words, it's decidedly unlikely.

Left unresolved is the matter of her heart, in which we know for certain that there's a mass that's affecting its functioning to a small degree. We're awaiting the latest monitor results, and we have another MRI scheduled in February, this time focusing on the ticker.

I hadn't thought that my daughter would be spending so much of her early life visiting doctors and hospitals. I suppose, in a way, that I should be grateful--many people and many children are far, far worse off.

'Tis the Season

2004-12-29T23:39:00.000-05:00

My flow of mental spewings has, as will be evident to anyone comparing the date of this entry with the one that preceded it, slowed to a trickle. I wish that I could report that this was due entirely to the arrival of mini-BG, but it just isn't so. Fact is, I could probably dedicate more time to this endeavor if I simply...dedicated more time to the endeavor.

Not only that, but I've not been spending my free time introducing my infant daughter to the joys of literature. No, most nights I return from work and fulfill my portion of the child-rearing duties with a TV remote in my hand. The only reason that I'm able to put the finishing touches on this entry (which I started yesterday) are because the wife and daughter are out doing their part to float the economy.

Hmmm...perhaps I should retitle this 'blog "bitch ghost" for the time being. I seem to be doing precious little else here. Onto something a little less kvetching.

The Xmas weekend was a bit outside the traditional this year, as MLW and I requested that we not undertake the "rock star tour" through the tri-state area, on account of the little one. So we played hosts, and due to all attending parties bringing their share of the nosh, everyone was quite sated.

What was even more surprising was the fact that we weren't literally buried beneath presents for the little one. At the risk of slipping into the realm of the ungrateful, I hadn't really relished the thought of trying to find space for a couple dozen stuffed animals and a metric ton of toys that make noise. We needn't have worried.

The best part? Having nowhere to go and nothing to do on Sunday. We not only slept in, but we remained firmly ensconced in the bedroom for the majority of the day, venturing downstairs only to retrieve the sustenance necessary to keep us functioning.

And then it was back to work.

Next: Work

Do I Really Even Love You? Or Do I Really Love Your...Brain?

2004-12-10T20:57:00.000-05:00

Okay, I've probably got enough time between feedings and attempts at sleep for a very brief update.

As mentioned in my last post, we did end up taking Mini Beach Ghost for grey matter scan.

They came back clean.

Of course, this doesn't completely remove the possibility of TSC, but it reduces the chances of mental developmental issues to practically zero. So, I think I'm going to celebrate by trying to sleep for three or four hours...in a row.

Alive in the Superunknown

2004-12-01T22:25:00.000-05:00

Well, a few weeks have gone by since I've had any time to string together a few coherent thoughts in a (somewhat) logical progression; this post may or may not fit that qualification.

Since my last post was so heartening, I figured I'd make up for my absence from the blogosphere by providing some homogeneity in mood.

I wish that I could shed a bit more light on the Beach Ghostlet's condition, but nothing definitive has been determined. This despite a follow-up visit to the cardiologist who first spotted the cardiac mass, and despite a second opinion from a doctor at one of the most respected hospitals in the area. If anything, the follow-ups have actually created more uncertainty. We've also had to add a new word to our frequently used medical lexicon: fibroma.

The good news about the two visits is that we've determined that the mass isn't affecting either the heart's rate of flow or its electrical impulses. The not-so-good news is that if the decision was made to go in to resect the tumor, they wouldn't be able to remove it all, since it takes up a good portion of one ventricle wall. Still, everyone agrees that her being asymptomatic is a good thing and that there's no need to break out the sharp things unless that changes; at the moment, that doesn't seem likely.

But there's still the possibility of TSC to deal with. The gene test is still not due, and it was recommended to us that we take the baby in for an MRI of her head. TSC is characterized by tumors in many places, including the brain. So, as can be imagined, I'm thrilled.

Do I think that something is seriously wrong? Perhaps I'm simply being overly optimistic (what, me worry?) but I think not. She just doesn't seem sick, and is actually becoming more alert, beginning to focus on specific objects, and showing signs of an actual personality. She is, in other words, progressing.

It's just unfortunate that I have to wait a week or so to confirm what I think.

In The Wee Small Hours

2004-11-13T17:05:00.000-05:00

Okay, being a parent does change everything. If, for nothing else, for the fact that your regular sleep schedule becomes anything but. I have been fortunate enough that MLW has taken on the lion's share of the overnight feeding duties so that I can be somewhat functional at my place of employment (or at least, you know, as functional as I usually am). But the first few days, when I was attempting to catch maybe five hours of sleep in a fold-out chair next to a drafty window and having a creature who is absolutely dependant on me (okay, not me specifically) for sustenance make her presence known every few hours reminds you that your life will no longer be that to which you were accustomed.

What I didn't expect was how I would react on an emotional level. The first couple days (and nights) we were back from the hospital, I went through a spate of what I could only later diagnose as free-floating anxiety. I wasn't eating all that much, was having difficulty sleeping even when I had the opportunity, and felt off-balance to the point that I was on the verge of tears the majority of my first day back at my job.

Of course, some of that is also tied up into the fact that MLW and I had to learn two new medical terms last week: Rhabdomyoma and Tuberous Sclerosis (TSC). And, worse, how the former relates to the latter. After meeting with cardiologists, a geneticist, pediatricians, and subjecting her to blood tests, sonograms, and EKGs we've determined...not much.

The one fact that has been established is that our baby girl has a (non-cancerous) tumor in her heart that isn't currently affecting her blood flow. In fact, it's entirely possible that even if her gene test indicates that she does have TSC, it may never have any serious effect. We have about five weeks to go before we find out the results of the gene test, but a preliminary sonogram has shown no signs.

So, add the stress of having a newborn, on (currently) one income, who might very well need to be monitored for the rest of her life, and you may get an idea of what the last week has been like.

But these are all negatives--as the picture in my previous post illustrates, she's an absolute beauty. Her eyes have opened, and having them stare at me with what could be interpreted as recognition is something I've never before experienced.

Waiting for a Girl Like You

2004-11-02T12:41:00.000-05:00

Welcome to the world!

Get Nervous, Get Nervous

2004-10-31T16:34:00.000-05:00

Well, according to the calendar, The Spawn should have made its appearance about three days ago. However, it has decided to make its own schedule, and MLW and I have been left to twiddle our thumbs.

Over the past seven days, MLW has had a few twinges that might have been the beginnings of labor, but no. For the most part, all the preparations we needed to make for The Spawn's arrival have been made. So we have had very little to actually do except wait. And wait. And...wait.

The situation, unfortunately, is only exacerbated at work, where I've made a concerted effort to get ahead of my tasks. Now I have plenty of time to dwell on how MLW could potentially go into labor now...or now...or now. To say the least, it's been stressful.

And it isn't as though we've simply been sitting around (although, yeah, there has been a bit of that as well). Yesterday, for instance, we went into the City and walked around for arond five hours. Granted, it's not as though we were spriting from point to point, but still. Other than forcing her to do jumping jacks, there's not much else I can think of to help MLW get The Spawn out any faster. They've not even arrived yet, and already the little tyke is proving willful. You just stop that right now, Mister or Missy!

My diet, which I mentioned a few weeks ago, has finally found a destination. For some reason, there have been absolutely not little ghouls and ghosts ringing our bell today, so I've indulged in an all-sugar brunch. I've not stepped on a scale in a while.

My nerves have not been helped by the upcoming Presidential Election. Regardless of whether you'd prefer a Republican or a Democrat, there's a poll out there that will tell you that your candidate is winning. Of course, if you believe in the science of coincidences, the election is already over. MLW, who's much more gifted in contingency plans, decided to vote via absentee ballot in case The Spawn showed up on Election Day. I made no such preparations. So now I fully expect to be in a hospital on Nov. 2nd instead of a Voting Booth. It's almost a lock.

This has been pretty scattershot--which fits my mental state perfectly.

Just a Song Before I Go

2004-10-20T21:48:00.000-04:00

Well, the hour groweth late, and soon The Spawn will be let loose upon the world. Well, that's the prevailing theory, anyway. My lovely wife is due to go back to the doctor tomorrow to uncover whether or not our future arrival has yet decided to begin its journey downward and upward.

I find myself wondering (as I'm sure many expectant fathers do) about the future, both theirs, my wife's, and my own. What will their world be like? How will they react to having access to media and information every single second of their lives? Will they become adept at picking out the information they need, or will the sheer volume of it be overwhelming (personally, I'm guessing the former)? Will their belief system arise from the morals MLW and I try to teach them or as a reaction against them? What will they think of the half-formed thoughts that are preserved here?

And the grand pappy of them all: What kind of world will they inherit?

Then, of course, there will be the barrage of questions about things that I'll never be able to explain: "When Descartes posited that he could verify his own existence because of the fact that he was questioning it (cognito, ergo sum), did he take into account that he may just be a cyborg with the ability to reason? Can you really exist, per se, if you're a construct that has been programmed to believe in their existence?"

Or: "What makes Mars Polaris better than any of the other albums Tangerine Dream has put out recently?"

Or: "Dad, is there a hallucinogen that makes people like you? Did you give some to Mommy when you first met her?"

And finally: "Dad, can you not bring up the merits of the OGL and the d20 system when my friends are around? You said you'd tell them you were a rat catcher. Please?"

By The Way

2004-10-16T18:12:00.000-04:00

The other piece of trash was Star Trek: Nemesis. I had heard it was bad, and in that I was not disappointed.

Perhaps someone could dig up the reels of Star Trek II and bash some Paramount execs over the head with them. Would it be possible to have a Trek movie with character moments that don't feel forced or marginalized? This movie starts off with a wedding in the very first act, yet we never see the proposal; it's as if the producers believe the viewers should simply be satisified with the character development that's occurring off screen.

Furthermore, moments that are thrown in simply to lighten the mood, usually at the expense of one of the characters who has spent the majority of two series proving that he was much more than just the butt of jokes is disrespectful to the character, the actor who plays him, and the audience watching the whole thing. The powers that be seem to have decided that they need to bring in an audience who are not devoted Trek fans. If the box office is any indication, they've failed in that endeavor and turned off a fair number of their core audience in the process.

I could go on, but I already feel that I've awarded the movie more of my attention than its deserved.

Post Script: Someone has actually already gone through the trouble of detailing the other flaws...with pictures!

Lazarus Wasn't Grateful for his Second Wind

2004-10-11T23:18:00.000-04:00

Now that The Beast has been submitted, I'm able to pay a bit more attention to my other priorities...well, at least until such time that The Spawn makes its appearance.

Yesterday we rented and sat through two movies, neither of which I would recommend. The more notable of the two was Mel Gibson's Jesus Chainsaw Massacre. This was one that I was glad not to have seen in the theater. But I'll get to that in a second.

One of the reasons I had for disliking this film is that it's guilty of the same charge that gets leveled at many genre movies based on novels--you have to already understand the entirety of the world in which it takes place. Many of the critiques of the greatest trilogy of all time was that people couldn't remember who the characters were, where they were in relation to each other, and why certain moments were significant. I've always thought the charge was spurious at best, but The Passion of the Christ was undoubtedly made by a Catholic for Catholics (and certain religious scholars). The arbitrariness of this decision is mind-boggling.

Take, for instance, the guy standing with the two Marys who witnesses all of Jesus' suffering. Think it would have been difficult to toss his name out, even once? The entire time we were viewing the movie, I was thinking to myself, "Obviously, this guy is important. He's witnessing this entire spectacle. Who is he?" Only by looking up his name online was I able to find out that it was the disciple loved by football fans across the US, John. How many people, aside from those already intimately familiar with the Bible, were going to know that off the top of their head? Hell, I'm a lapsed Catholic, so I probably should have known that. I didn't. At least, in the Lord of the Rings, the characters names were repeated again and again and again. Heck, in the case of Theoden, they even threw his title into the bargain. "Hail, Theoden King!" Having to think about who that guy was just took part of my mind right out of the movie.

Which I guess could also be somewhat of a blessing, because it allowed me to think about something other than the orgiastic display of bloodletting I was watching. Of course, I knew that the movie was going to be violent--Mel Gibson has never shied away from bloodshed before and suffering is right there in the title of the movie. But this movie didn't just depict Jesus' suffering--it reveled in it to a nauseating degree.

Two moments sealed this for me. The first is when the old Son of God has been getting his holy ass whipped for something on the order of five minutes, complete with flesh being literally ripped from his body, and he is laying on the ground, bloody and beaten. The commander of the guards in charge of the scourging slowly gets to his feet, extends his hand...and then turns it over. Then we get to see more whipping, this time on Jesus' chest and face. The second was much briefer, but just as prurient: Jesus is having his second hand nailed to the cross. We saw the first hand get nailed in, but this time the hand is out of the shot. But when the hammer pounds in the nail, we get to see a little geyser of blood spurt into the frame...in slow motion! There is no point to the shot, nothing gained by the addition of an additional ejaculation of gore, it is there simply because the director seems to believe that the only way to drive home the point is to remove all subtlety from the process. Do you get it? Jesus didn't just die for you, he got the living shit kicked out of him for almost 24 hours straight! Believe yet?

But here's the ultimate failing, in my mind, of the movie: it's not the right story. The mystery of faith has three legs, after all--Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again. The first of these three is really the least important. Before his death, Jesus was a prophet who worked a few miracles and was killed for it. People had died before he did, and more have done so after. It's coming back that's important. If Jesus doesn't appear before his disciples, there's no Catholicism. Jesus' death gave all men a clean slate, but someone had to teach them that.

So, really, the movie ended when it really should have begun. Why are we not seeing the story of John, who we see throughout the movie and know writes one of the four Gospels? Or the story of Simon from Cyrene, who helps Jesus carry the cross? Unless, of course, I'm to believe that witnessing the experience of the slow death of the Son of God was to have made such an impression that it would compel me to proselytize on its (and, tangentially, Jesus') behalf.

But I can't believe that. That would be the pinnacle of hubris.

Next: Oh yeah, the other movie.

The Beautyful* Ones Are Not Yet Born

2004-09-30T21:47:00.000-04:00

I started this entry...oh, about three weeks ago. Since then, there's been one birth, and MLW and I are getting ever closer to our own due date. But it's been a wee bit busy. So, here ya go--a little dated, but some content is better than none.

There are a little over 5 weeks until we arrive at "Labor Day," and the level of pre-birth activity is beginning to crescendo. If my calculations are correct, we should officially hit fever pitch in about 3 weeks. Still, complaints from my end are clearly not warranted--I'm not the one who's been turned into a walking incubator.

What has been worthy of complaint has been my own experience with couvade. I thought I had been able to manage the temptation of MLW's food fluctuations, but my willpower has been substantially lacking of late--and I'm showing the results. I'm hoping that the new arrival will be enough motivation to shed the poundage (or perhaps the lack of sleep will do the trick), but I doubt it will be that easy.

In other news, there's not much other news. Life has been a series of work, baby, and moonlighting. I'm now in Phase Two of The Beast, and am hoping to put that to bed within the next week.

Then, it's the calm before the storm. Since the gender is (still) a surprise, the betting pool can be accessed via the comments link below.

* - (sic)

Freight of Fire

2004-08-25T19:15:00.000-04:00

More random musings...

--I now officially love outlines. Work on The Beast has been made immeasurably easier by the fact that I had to slog through and create a detailed outline before I began the actual work. Used to be I would set to typing when I just had a beginning and an ending, and I would almost always get stuck somewhere in the middle. Now, there's just been no stopping me.

--As for The Beast, it's progressing nicely. I've in the midst of the second of what will ultimately be three parts, and aside from thinking up world-specific names that don't sound like a bad joke, I don't forsee any obstacles (other than, y'know, actually writing the thing). Of course, I've already passed the halfway point of my word limit. Uh-oh. I'm not sweating it just yet, as I've saved the most grueling parts (polishing the draft and the crunchy bits) until after I've done a complete run-through.

--A friend of mine mentioned recently that he had purged himself of a portion of his CD collection, including many albums that fall into the "Alt/Country" genre. Of course, at the mere mention of the genre, my mind instantly locked onto the Scud Mountain Boys. Their main songwriter, Joe Pernice, managed to take the everlasting subject of singer/songwriters, "boy meets girl / boy loses girl / boy starts Alt/Country band so he can write about it," and distill it down to a single couplet:

Love, it came like a burning freight of fire
Love, it died just like three days without water

The Number of the Beast

2004-08-15T21:19:00.000-04:00

So this week I received my own, specially-made due date for the Beast to be set loose. Promises will have to be broken, and those precious few constant readers I have will perhaps be even more disappointed then they already have been. If such a thing is possible.

Did some good work on the beast today, and would probably have done even better had not the whims of wireless connectivity conspired to erase the entirety of two hours effort. When attempting to write intelligently, my pace tends to slow considerably, so this was a rather unpleasant setback. Still, there was enough memory left in my noggin that I was able to recreate what had been lost, and add to it when all was said and done.

Still, I'm going to have to pick up the pace while time is still my friend, else I will regret it when the deadline looms nearer.

So...expect little from here, and perhaps you will be pleasantly surprised if something shows up.

Hidin' on the Backstreets

2004-08-08T21:00:00.000-04:00

Some eons ago, I wrote the first of what will eventually be a multipart spew of my love of The Boss. Time has moved on since then, and Mr. Springsteen has come back into the spotlight in a big way; he's decided not only to publicly support a presidential candidate, but he's also decided to actively work on defeating a sitting one by performing a series of concerts in the much ballyhooed "swing states."

This will, more than likely, piss quite a few people off. I can certainly see why it would be disappointing for those folks who don't share the views of Jersey's storied son to express himself on the matter. Although I don't believe his political slant should have been all that surprising, since he has been revealing his leanings ever so slowly througout the course of his career. One of the incidents that I've previously recounted, in fact, may have even spurred his thoughts into the political arena than he'd ever done in the past. Still, as long as he didn't come right out and say it, The Boss' fans could imagine that he didn't think of the matter in one sense or another, or for that matter, at all. He's decided to change all that, and seems pretty certain to take some heat for it as a result.

I can understand the disappointment of those fans who feel as if the rug has been pulled from beneath them; I can remember when I learned that Neil Young supported Ronnie Reagan. Fans who are shell-shocked at the news of Mr. Springsteen's defection to the politcal left can perhaps take solace that, like Mr. Young, there's always the possibility that he'll switch.

None of which was what I really wanted to type about, but it did serve as an impetus.

The topic I did want to cover was to address the apparent inauthenticity of the music versus the man. This came up in an article I read shortly after a local museum opened an exhibit with Springsteen as the focus. The article (I don't recall who wrote it) posited that both the exhibit and Bruce were shams; The Boss, now a rich, middle-aged man living on a palatial estate, could no longer be accepted as a voice of the downtrodden he had built a career representing.

Ouch.

I don't recall if the article had a suggestion as to what Bruuuuuucccee should be writing about instead, or whether it was expected that he would now have to show up at major media events dressed more authentically, but I didn't have a way of calling a crock a crock outside of my personal opinion and knowledge I'd garnered that probably could have been put to better use honing my writing craft.

Thankfully, one of my fellow anal-retentives over at the Backstreets Web site posed the question for me. I've excerpted it to its essentials:

Backstreets: That makes me think about that "criticism" you always seem to get: how can a millionaire still write about blue collar concerns?

Springsteen: That criticism is also a tremendously muddled idea of how writers write. It seems to me that particular criticism gets aimed at musicians rather than, say, filmmakers. Nobody complains that Marty Scorcese isn't actually in the Mafia. It always comes up -- I've settled into the fact that I'll be answering that question for the rest of my working life. But it's a muddled understanding of the way that things get written.

Admittedly, this doesn't really answer the question, or at least it doesn't answer it well. My own theory has always been that Springsteen wrote how and about what concerned him, and that concern didn't necessarily change because he happened to get very wealthy doing it.

As for his persona, I feel pretty confident in saying that he generally appears to be pretty humble and soft-spoken because that's the way he is. If I've understood the teachings of Marsh, Springsteen really did learn more from a 3-minute record than he ever did at school. It's possible that he may be hesitant to speak on matters in which he doesn't feel like the intellectual be-all end-all (disingenous folks may perhaps use that as a reason why he chose the end of political spectrum that he did--shame on them).

Of course, I'm just as full of shit as anybody. But I wouldn't be surprised if there were folks who tried to dismiss The Boss' contribution to this year's political debate based on this argument.

Don't believe it.

Is There Anybody Out There?

2004-08-05T23:32:00.000-04:00

Youch, it looks like another work week is about to end--and it had felt so promising but just a few short days ago!

Between The Beast and my future progeny, the week has moved forward like a windshield toward a fly.

Tuesday MLW (who thankfully is more tardy at updating her 'blog than I am) and I went for the first of four birth classes. Now, I too can finally say that I saw a vagina spread open like a Ween album cover. I can die a happy man.

Wednesday I had some work to do for The Beast, and tonight MLW and I got to spend some quality time with our financial advisor. Tomorrow night we get to go visit my grandparents-in-law so we can pack and move their knick-knacks so that the remnants of their rug--which is approximately as old as I am--can be scraped off the floor.

Ah, the tales I could tell, if only I had the time...

There Will Be No Rain

2004-07-25T22:11:00.000-04:00

Today's title is my attempt at wishful thinking; this week has been nothing if not wet. Some of it, unfortunately, wasn't exactly related to precipitation.

As seems to be the prevalent pattern, I'm only really getting 'round to this baby once a week. Other details have been getting in the way; the life of work has been taking precedence over life in general. Not that this is unexpected; the 'blog is one of the lower priorities in my ever-shifting anal-retentive list of things to putter with.

This particular weekend was a calm one. Preparations for the impending arrival proceed apace; but we have to destroy the children's enivronment in order to save it. Over the course of the week I slowly built up a patch of spackle on the ceiling in what had been the library. When I painted over it today, it continued to look like a large chunk of spackle--now with a fresh layer of paint. It is already far too late in the game for me to be handy; at this point, I'm settling for competent.

Next weekend, I'm looking forward to actually getting away for a few days. The view won't be as spectacular as seen here, and there will be about 10,000 more people, but it'll be the first time this year I'll have been able to enjoy the sun and sand.

I've often wondered about the ritual of people going to shoreland areas during the summer. Is it simply because people like to partake of the typical trappings of the season--the heat, the surf, the overpriced boardwalk food, the teens wearing the bon mot T-shirt of the week--or is there a primal need to get back to the water? Of course, I wasn't raised in a land-locked area of the country, so my own range of experience is lacking. But it would certainly appear that there are other places that are just as warm as any other where you could certainly replicate the experience.

Then again, perhaps its all a matter of transference on my part; I see a ritual that brings me back to the ocean as having meaning in a larger context. But perhaps it only has that meaning for me...

Of course, if that were strictly true, I'd be all by myself out there.