So today I got pointed over to Philip Athans’s blog and his brand new willingness to try a romance novel because he recently had the (mis)fortune to accidentally listen to an Andy Gibb song.

On the surface, one would assume that Mr. Athans either suffered a head injury or else the hearing of the succulent voice of Andy Gibb either traumatized his mind or turned him gay. Or possibly both.

But I appreciate Philip’s position (did you see that unprofessional way I switched to his first name? It’s as if I decided, most suddenly, that I wanted to use it instead of something more formal… because that is The Way. I. Roll.)

Now, I should clarify. I don’t know any Andy Gibb songs and I have no desire to learn them. I also still hate Abba and the Bee Gees (“it’s those blasted Bee Gees!”). My wife doesn’t share my opinion. Neither does her family. I have to hide in solitary when we go to family gatherings for fear of being forced into a “Dancing Queen” sing along.

But let me back up. Since Philip used music to introduce it, I’ll use music too.

In seventh grade.. ish… I listened to Top 40 music. I really hadn’t been introduced to anything. Kiss 98 was what played at the swimming pool in the summers when I lived in Nebraska, so I knew Sting singing “Free, Free, set them free” and Tears for Fears singing “Everybody wants to rule the world.” So when we moved I naturally found the top 40 stations. By 9th grade my favorite albums (on tape) were Starship’s Knee Deep in the Hoopla, Heart (the one with “These Dreams”, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts Up Your Alley, and Cutting Crew’s Broadcast. Though close follow ups were Huey Lewis and the News Sports and the soundtrack for Ghostbusters. Thing is I knew I liked guitar, but, I had no idea what real guitar sounded like. I had an inkling of good bands, but with the possible exception of Joan Jett, none of those are close to the artists’ finest moments (well, maybe Huey is an exception too, but that’s a completely different story). And really, there were better bands out there. Especially with Starship. I mean, technically it was almost the same band that had played at Woodstock. WOODSTOCK. Grace Slick had once told us to “go ask Alice,” a song that resonates through all kinds of different layers socially and musically, and in the one I liked, the lyrics went

Knee deep in the hoopla
Sinking in your face

I mean… what?

(Not that I hate that song, but let’s move on before we talk about why I wasn’t wrong here).

I happened to be a loser. Not quite a nerd, then I would have had science club or AV club friends or something. but more of a Dork. I had… one (ONE. 1. Uno. Einz. 01.) friend in seventh grade. Aaron had been heavily influenced by his almost pothead brothers. He liked metal. Led Zeppelin was the best any music could ever aspire too. Randy Rhodes was brilliant.

I never got fully into his music, though now I’d dig on it a lot more. But he opened my world. By the time I was in tenth grade, I was listening to classic rock and everything else SUCKED.

I have a debt to Aaron for opening the door to music. I never would have found the best of hte best of the best, 99% of the music I adore now, if it hadn’t been for him. Of course, he also stunted me. The classic rock or die thing was his fault too. So I really missed out on some awesome music while it was on the air waves. But still.

Gradually, I learned a bit of other stuff. I made fun of people who like Morrissey, and even though I went through a metal phase (I bought the soundtrack to Shocker… which was a disservice, featuring as it did a lame cover of an Alice Cooper song), I was peer pressured into destroying my tape of Run DMC’s Raisin’ Hell (though I have managed to recover that on LP, a treasured possession now), I disavowed several other things I loved, and I alienated people that could have helped.

In 1990, however, the world fell in love again. We were marching hand in hand (though we didn’t know why), and a brand new record came out. They Might Be Giants brand new album Flood. This album is a work of pure genius. I heard that The Band’s (The Band, not the band They Might Be Giants) Music from Big Pink changed lives. Well, Flood changed mine.

Suddenly, music didn’t have to be 20 years old to be any good. (In truth, I had adapted that rule. I couldn’t like Clapton’s Journeyman otherwise. But it was something like, 20 years old, or by someone who was recording 20 years ago — still lame. It took me years before I finally bought my own copy of Kill Uncle, an album I still adore.

Over the years, my taste has only expanded. I still don’t like country or most gangsta rap (but it most assuredly is all about the Benjamins). But Johnny Cash and the Fat Boys are in my regular rotation. There probably isn’t a genre of western music that isn’t on my iPod. There are some eastern music too, but I have less exposure to that, so I don’t have as much. I can consider a song on its own terms now, instead of assuming that I know what it’s about just because of what radio station it’s on.

A lot of people think they’re open minded because they listen to both country and Top 40. That’s not what I’m talking about. Let me emphasize to you. I will listen to Peter Gabriel’s “Solsbury Hill” followed by P.O.D. doing “Lights Out,” which will then transition to Dynamite Hack’s hilarious early-20th century-esque cover of “Boyz in the Hood.” Followed by MC 900 Foot Jesus doing “The City Sleeps,” Bela Fleck doing “How Can you Face Me Now,” a performance of Holst’s planets, and finish the short burst out with The Ramones. (Oh yes, Joey, I do remember rock’n'roll radio). And yes, I put kids songs in the playlist too.

Thing is… I’m still a snob about it. There is music I hear and then simply Will. Not. Touch. of my own accord ever. And people who like those songs are often as not morons in my head. But I have, at least stopped telling people that. To their faces. Very often.

A similar thing happened to me with movies.

I was into movies, but I was very careful about my reasons for watching a movie. Story was highest on my list. Solid story, then well-acted performances. If I couldn’t justify it, it was kind of a shameful viewing.

Then I realized… it’s OK to watch a movie because it was eye candy. Great special effects, beautiful cinematography, or even just great explosions. Then there came other reasons – Jackie Chan flipping around was suddenly appealing.

These days I enjoy what I call “bad cinema.” A Godzilla movie holds a lot of appeal for me. Not any movie will work, though. A movie has to be trying, at least. Or at least have one great idea. A lot of dumb comedies try to hard to be in your face and absurd. Juvenile. But I like 80s teen movies — John Hughes never talked down to me; he always seemed to know what he was talking about. His characters, even if they could only be properly described as losers, never seemed like a waste of space.

So that brings us back to music. I will listen to Lady Gaga and Cyndi Lauper. I can put them on a playlist with Bob Dylan and Joe Satriani. Because I listen to each of those for a different reason. Not every song hits me, but if it does, I’ll listen to it more than once.

It’s the same with books, really. Comics, for example. Sturgeon’s law applies. Most of it is horrible, but even a lot of that is still fun to read. And what’s wrong with reading for fun? I have a guilty pleasure I like to indulge — reading Shoujo Manga (Japanese made comics targeted toward a female audience). I love Azamanga Daioh and Gina Biggs is a wonderful writer.

So, yeah, I’m not ready to seriously investigate the romance genre at this time (which, going back to the begining, was Philip’s reason for mentioning Andy Gibb). I reckon, however, it has something it could teach me about writing. There’s a reason romance is so successful. And it’s not because it’s horrible. Horrible it may be, but there’s something there that appeals to people.

Marriage & the gospel are essentially selfish: they are things we enter into to make ourselves happy — what I’ve missed for so long is that for my marriage to make me happy, I have to strive to make my wife happy. For so long, maybe because of what I thought I saw in the world, I thought that just “being together” should be enough for any person in a relationship. But what you are entering into when you marry is a covenant to try to make the other person fulfilled. Yes, we need it to fulfill ourselves, and that’s a lot of what drives us to it. But the way that marriage fulfills us isn’t by proximity, or even the suddenly allowed physical intimacy. It’s because it gives us the opportunity for a very personal and intense experience of focusing on what can make someone else happy and fulfilled.

Does this mean there is no room for ourselves in a relationship? I ask this thinking of how single persons will react to the ideas in the previous paragraph. Admittedly, partially this is to justify myself. But it is a valid question. Especially for a person who isn’t married. Certainly I do not want to suggest that there is no value in an individual — after all, every soul is precious in the eyes of God. Every soul. There’s a lot of talk of love making one soul out of two, and I think there’s a lot of validity to the conceptualization. But one needs to remember that before the ONE soul is made, there were TWO, COMPLETE souls.

And that’s why I began with saying that these thoughts apply both marriage specifically and the gospel writ large. Personally, I need to work out things pertaining to my marriage, but I think I’m saying very little that can’t be absorbed in that context.

Again I point out that this is a path to personal fulfillment. Christ says “he that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.” And he also says, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” The first seems to be about subverting the ego. Losing ourselves in the work. But losing yourself, according to this scripture isn’t about losing identity completely. By focusing away from ourselves, and into the better part, we find out who we really are. Who WE are. The second points out that true love doesn’t focus on ourselves.

We can’t be completely unaware of the irony here. That’s the point of the idea, after all. While we are striving to fulfill the other, the other is, if she’s working on the same, working to fulfill us. We achieve our happiness both through performing service and through the service rendered by the other. The two together are what make the whole. And that is the plan of happiness.

Saturday I took the girls to Target to spend their dollars. Naturally, I ended up in the toy aisles. I’d like to pretend this was because I had three people under the age of 8 with me, but we all know my penchant for buying and playing with toys. Plus the girls wouldn’t stop in the G.I. Joe and Star Wars aisle. To make a long story short, I saw two new lines of toys. This was surprising in that Christmas was less than two weeks previous, and it seems like January is a poor time to market a new set of toys, but there you have it. I was no less excited over the prospect.

The first one I want to talk about is the new set of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles figures. They look really different than previous lines, but this is hardly a shock, since they’re based on the new film coming out and the character design for the new films is very different from previous movies or shows. I’m not very convinced I like the new designs, but I’m excited for the movie (though it could very easily turn out to be lame). Maybe my position will reverse on this issue in a couple months.

So I didn’t buy any turtles. I did, however buy April O’Neil. April in the new line is dressed like a ninja — complete with katana and overly large tonfa that is bigger than her leg (normally a tonfa is only slightly longer than your forearm and fist). This would be an entirely new approach to the character than I’ve really seen before, which intriguing less that the figure is this way (toy lines have made her a ninja before) but that it reflects what will be in the movie. Yes, I’m interested. They could very easily blow this, but still.

Anyway, April gets the thumbs up. She looks good, if cartoony (and well, what did you expect?), plus she stands and isn’t fragile. You go girl.

The other set of toys is the brand spanking new line of Marvel Comics based action figures coming out of Hasbro. At least a year ago, Marvel announced that they would be discontinuing their contract with Toy Biz and moving to Hasbro, but I didn’t think it would take a full year to ramp up to actual distribution of collectible figures. Foolish Eric. When I first heard the news I was disappointed and apprehensive. Toy Biz has made the best figures I’ve ever seen, hands down, with their Marvel Legends line. Super articulated with quality sculpts, they’re fun to look at, sturdy, and highly posable. Hasbro, on the other hand, does the craptastic Star Wars figures that are out now. 90% or more of the current Star Wars figures cannot stand up without leaning on something. The poses are awkward and while the sculpts have improved over the last couple years, they’re still mostly suckaliscious. I suppose that’s good for my wallet though, seeing as even though I hate them I still buy all sorts of Jedi figures. I need help.

So, yes, I bought all six figures in Hasbro’s new Marvel Legends line. I tried to convince myself to only grab one or two for approximately .36 seconds before acknowledging the futility of the argument. As soon as I saw all six figures where there, I took them, despite the physical impossibility of carrying all of them. I had to enlist my daughters, already laden with the popcorn and lemonade they had bought, into helping me until I found a shopping cart. Despite the fact that some of them were, well, stupid. Don’t get me wrong. While the Hasbro figures aren’t as articulated as the ones from Toy Biz, they’re quality sculpts, sturdy figures, and still quite posable. In terms of quality, these are very good toys.

See, the thing is, with the Toy Biz lines, you could never get some of the figures of any given series. Let’s use Series 13: Onslaught Series as an example. It was relatively easy to find Lady Deathstrike, Blackheart, and Pyro figures, but very difficult to get the others unless you preordered or bought off amazon, which takes half the fun out of it. This is because those three I mentioned are, well, stupid. D-U-M, dumb. Plus they weren’t great sculpts, relatively speaking, particularly Lady Deathstrike. You couldn’t make most collectors care enough to get them, even though you have to buy all six figures to be able to build the Onslaught figure. Naturally, I did buy all six, eventually. Because I am Toy Biz’s bitch.

The thing that got me was the building additionial figures. Most of these figures are cool, like Onslaught, Galactus. And usually only one or two of the figures in a series suck too badly, which makes me feel better about buying them. But some of the build figures are pretty darn insipid too. I mean, I can almost see Mojo, but Modok? Frickin’ MODOK? who cares about Modok? No one. Nobody cares.

But what got me about the figures in Hasbro’s new line is the character selection. There are some silly figures in the Toy Biz series, but they’ve done over 100 figures. Even with some alternate versions (such as First Appearance Iron Man or black costume Spidey — yet, sadly, never a Ben Reilly costume Spidey… how we hates them, yes we do…), you’re going to have to dip into some less impressive characters. On the other hand, Hasbro is introducing a brand new line. Trying to get a new following, from scratch, essentially. So why are there second- and third-string characters on the shelf here?

Ultimates Iron Man is shiney, both in the literal sense and in the Firefly slang sense. Planet Hulk … er… Hulk is both timely and original looking. Heck, he looks like Spartacus. And let’s face it, Emma Frost is both popular right now and oh so very smexy. These are figures that will attract buyers. If I were starting a toy line based on Marvel properties I know who my first six action figures would be: Hulk, Spider-Man, Captain America, Iron Man, Wolverine, and well… Emma Frost. These are the first stringers. The most iconic of Marvel characters. These are characters known even by people who don’t particularly care about Marvel. If you want to mix it up you could replace a couple with villains — choose from The Green Goblin, The Red Skull, Magneto, and Venom, all recognizable characters. Sure, Toy Biz has done most of them during hte last few years, but come on, new line. It replaces the old. *These* are going to be the ones everybody wants now.

I don’t really know what to say about including Hercules. I mean,for starters, the sculpt isn’t to die for. He can barely hold on to his mace, and his head looks like it grows from his chest, with a neck behind it. For some reason, Marvel keeps wanting to think he’s a significant character, even though most of us forgot (often on purpose) that he’s even in that universe (they do this with characters like Namor and Black Panther too — seriously guys, stop trying to even out sales and focus on characters we already like). He’s not even Thor, who is at least a character that people recognize as a superhero. People only recognize Hercules as a bad TV show and a worse Disney cartoon. Some of the unwashed masses might remember he’s a figure from ancient mythology, but no one thinks “comic books!” when they hear the name Hercules.

Then there’s X3 Beast. Not Beast. But the Beast as played by Kelsey Grammer in X-Men 3: The Last Stand, the worst X-Men movie of the lot. Ok, well, at least it’s not Elektra, but still. Look, I’m willing to give them a lot more props for this movie than most people are, but neither I, nor anyone I know, is exactly clamoring for an action figure of Frasier. And what we got in that movie was a hairy blue psychiatrist. Couldn’t we just have one that looks good like the comics?

Finally, there’s Banshee. Yeah, Banshee. He’s never actually been in a movie. This is because he sucks. His superpower is yelling. Now I know it’s cool to show the character using his power, but well, come on. Banshee’s craptacular sculpt makes him look like he’s coming on to the other male characters. This is not good.

So yeah, in general thumbs up. But there’s still some problems I’m not happy with. But yes, I still bought them all.

I had to in order to have the parts to build Annihilus.

No, I don’t know exactly who that is.

Congrats Hasbro, you win. I am now your bitch.

I confess, I’m a tech. I sully my hands, ears and tongue answering questions for people. Most of whom have no clue what they’re doing. So it comes as no surprise that I would have something to say about how dumb people are. Well, it takes something big to phase me these days, and since most people who call in realize they have no clue, I’m more than willing to help them and even grudgingly respect that they’re taking a step into a wider world. The other day, I got a call from someone that I can’t bring myself to even think one nice thought about.

I work for a national Internet provider, which is really more of a multi-level marketing place. Don’t give me any grief on that, though, they treat me much better than just about any other employer I’ve worked for, and on top of that they do actually provide better quality service and products than any other ISP I’m familiar with (plus they have top notch tech support!). One of the products they sell is a combination phone/Internet access device. Kinda nifty, actually.

Ok, enough with the background. Here’s what I’m ranting about. A representative called in for some help on this Internet appliance. Only she’s not calling in for HER appliance, it belongs to one of her customers. This happens all the time, so it didn’t shock me, except that the customer wasn’t on the phone either. What’s more, she wasn’t even within convenient driving distance of the appliance. What’s more than that, she wasn’t even close to HER appliance so she could see what I was talking about. Yet demands ensued that I fix the problem. Only she doesn’t KNOW what the problem is. Maybe that’s unfair. Maybe it was just that she couldn’t explain what the problem was. Or maybe I’m right and she’s a freakin’ tard.

Among the evidence that she’s a freakin’ tard (“freakin’ tard” happens to be a very precise psychological term meaning “stupid idiot”) is the fact that she refused to explain what the problem was. Over the course of the first 15 minutes of the “conversation” (a term used loosely, I assure you) I realized that she doesn’t like to listen, she likes to hear her own voice. She interrupted every single time I tried to talk, especially if I was asking a question to find out what the heck was going on. Lest you think it was my own personal voice she objected to, I must also point out that she at one moment admitted that she didn’t even let her customer finish explaining the problem. In other words, we had the stupid (or the freakin’ tard) leading the blind (the blind man, who I am led to believe is also deaf and dumb, did not call because he’s shy about this sort of thing — by which I believe I understood properly meant anything invented since he was watching The Howdy Doody Show — which led me to wonder why this man was spending hundreds of dollars on a machine he had no intention of learning how to use; but I degress).

In all fairness, I must argue the other side. She was trying to help her customer. Why she thought I could do anything when she didn’t know the problem, and wouldn’t be able to articulate it even if she did, is beyond my ken. So there you have it, even if she wasn’t a freakin’ tard, she was at least utterly incompetent.

After 15 minutes or so of conversation, she was finally acquiesced to get her customer on the line for a three way call. This didn’t help. In addition to hanging up as soon as I put him on hold (despite the warning about what I was doing), Blind Man also had no idea how to articulate what was going on. (Sample conversation: me: “Describe to me what is going wrong.” him: “I don’t know.” me: “What exactly does it do, and what error does it give you when it does it?” him: “I don’t know.” me: “What does it do that you don’t like?” him: “I don’t know.” me (mentally expressed in the middle of more violent thoughts): Then how the heck do you know it’s not working right?!). Blind Man also interrupted a lot and made assumptions about what answer I was looking for. I was beginning to understand why these two had a business relationship. I was also beginning to wonder if they had gone to the same community college.

After roughly half an hour of conversation with persons with the combined IQ of a box of hammers, I finally thought I was beginning to grasp what the problem MIGHT have been, and informing the two that I was going to ask my supervisor a question and do a small amount of research, I put them on hold (this is when Blind Man bailed out). Well, admittedly, the search for information did take longer than anticipated, and I should have informed them that I was still working on it, but it’s not like I hung up. When I came back, freakin’ tard started yelling at me. This is not an exaggeration; I had the earpiece pulled away from my head and my neighbors will giving me dirty looks her voice was so loud. Apparently I was taking too long, and I was wasting her time when she was supposed to be on an important business call. I’m a professional, so I didn’t say this, but I should have: “Lady, you are the one wasting time. You are wasting your own time, your customer’s time, my time, and the time of every one of the fifteen people waiting on hold for a tech support representative to pick up the line and help them out. Now shut up and hangup. If you can’t plan your life around the business phone call you KNEW you needed to make at this hour, and if you can’t find out what a problem is before you try to solve it, then Stop pretending that you can do anything besides flip burgers you freaking tard!”

Next time, I’m just going to tell her, that I’m sorry, the switch for that particular device on our master control panel has somehow been switched to the “broken” position. I’ll just go switch that back to “fixed.” Sorry for the inconvenience. Maybe she’ll believe that.

Watching your wife give birth is a wild ride, at the very least. Having been through it four times, I feel qualified to speak a little bit about it. I have a friend who claims that watching his wife give birth is harder on him than actually giving birth is on his wife. I find that probably a touch insensitive, though I can understand what would lead him to the idea. You can’t help when your wife gives birth. Not really.

Guys move the furniture around. They get asked to do it, and they flex a little, knowing they were asked to do something specifically because of the body they have. It’s a bit egotistical, but it’s also quite subconscious. And every guy does it. No matter how much we pride ourselves on our minds and whatever else, we still are proud to be the ones who do the lifting and other grunt work.

But we can’t with the whole giving the baby thing. God made it that way, and not even the manliest man can change that. He has to sit and watch his wife do all the work; watch her strain, sweat, and push and flex. On the one hand, it’s hard as a human being, just to watch someone go through the pain and the effort. In addition, it’s the sort of thing YOU’RE supposed to be doing. It makes you feel helpless on a lot of different levels. You can’t make her feel better, you can’t help her get the job done, and she’s doing the physical work that’s supposed to be your department.

So, in a very real way, watching your wife give birth is sort of a psychological torture. You are completely useless.

Of course, the last sentence is not completely true. In fact, the whole purpose for being there in the room, with her is the emotional support. Which, of course, is traditionally her job. I get to hold her hand for several hours (about eight and a half, this time around) and tell her to “breathe.”

I understand, on an intellectual level, that telling her to relax and let her uterus do the work, and to breathe normally, is actually very helpful to my wife emotionally and even as a reminder of what she’s supposed to be doing. However, it’s not a tangible thing. When men think of service, we think “build stuff,” or “repair stuff,” or, even better, “tear stuff down.” We can go to a yard, rake up all the leaves, then stand back, and say “You can see what I did here. There were leaves, and now there aren’t.” With “breathing…” well, how do I know it’s even been done right? How can I see that I did any good? It’s all well and good when my wife says “thanks” and tells me how it helped, but I still don’t see it. I have to take her word for it (not that I think she’d lie… in fact, my wife would scream at me if I did it wrong).

And don’t forget physically exhausting. My greatest fear at this point is that people will think I’m diminishing what my wife does. Sure, she’s done more. She is more tired. I know that. But the next time you wake up at 1 am to tell someone for the next eight hours that she’s doing fine and to keep going that you won’t be tired. No, I didn’t have some muscles constantly flexing, sometimes painfully, and I didn’t push that 9 pound creature out of my crotch, but I’m still tired and in need of a nap.

So, clearly, there’s a lot of ground to argue for the man’s suffering. I don’t know that the two types of trials can be compared directly, actually, since people have varying capacities for dealing with problems of different sorts. However, the biggest problem with my friend’s argument is that as a man watching your child come into the world, you aren’t thinking a whit about any of that.

At one in the morning on April 29, 2006, my wife elbows me in the ribs. “Eric? The contractions are ten minutes apart. I need your help.”

Granted, this is the most trying part of the labor for me. I’m still in bed. It’s still absolutely dark, and there’s very little either of us can coherently say during the 9 minute stretches between the end of a contraction and the start of another. My eyelids are in complete and utter rebellion, trying to force a cranial shut down for at least another five hours.

However, combating this impulse are two very important concerns. First, if I don’t stay up, I am officially a jerk. There is no argument that could defend myself successfully. Even if I’d been awake for the 24 hours previous, I am a jerk if I don’t stay up. That would be my own judgment on myself, not some judgment (perceived or true) made by the rest of the world.

Second, I’m excited at this point. We’ve been waiting forty weeks for this to happen (actually, forty-one weeks). While I wasn’t thinking about it all the time, as soon as that due date passes, you can bet that I’m jumping at the slightest hint that labor is imminent. Even though no sane person not between the ages of 14 and 22 is awake at this hour, it’s like Santa Claus is going to appear any moment.

My job at this point is not just to hold her hand, occasionally massaging her lower back or legs, but also to watch the clock. When she says “here comes another one,” I need to be able to say how long it’s been since the last one started. This means I can’t go through motions. I have to be conscious enough to do basic arithmetic using a number I saw ten minute previous. Good thing I’m excited. If I’m really on the job, I’m counting seconds too, so I can say how long the contraction lasts.

This stage goes on for an hour. After each contraction ends, I stare at the digital clock and mentally will it to progress. If we can establish that the contractions are coming at regular intervals, (or even better, ever shrinking times), then we can go to the hospital. Once we’re there, the baby will come. We’ve got motivation to get this done. Of course, since, once again, there’s nothing I can do to stimulate the contractions, this leaves me trying to alter the course of time until I hear “Here comes another one!”

After an hour to ninety minutes of this, I finally feel brave enough to suggest my wife needs to call the doctor. One of the problems with being the father of the coming baby is that you know you’re out of your league. No matter how well you’ve studied all the manuals your wife made you read, you are in the position, roughly, of the freshmen intern hired primarily to make coffee. You have no good ideas. If you suggest something, the best result you can hope for is laughter. More likely, you are going to end up with a red, hand-shaped welt on your face.

Fortunately, for me, my wife agrees. I get the bag and the camera, and get myself a bowl of cereal (hey, maybe she can’t eat, but I’m gonna be hungry quite soon — my belly is quite Pavlovian, wake it up and it starts to drool). Then, when my wife is off the phone and getting on something she can go into public wearing, I call grandma. Grandma knows a whole lot more about what’s going on and when and why in life, but this is the one time in my life I can tell her to do something. In moments she is on her way.

The car ride in is awkward. Not in the “what do I say?” sort of way. But if it’s difficult to go watch regular labor, knowing that my wife is having a contraction while I’m doing 60 (gradually increasing to 70 and beyond) on the highway is maddening.

The following several hours are a marathon of impatience and frustration. The contractions are regular, but they aren’t getting closer together. There’s a machine that somehow measures contractions — how strong they are and when they’re happening, so I don’t have to wait for my wife to tell me. I can just watch the seismic readings on the chart being printed out. I get excited as I see a big one coming. But I have to hold it in, or face the wrath of a woman too busy to distinguish joy over the labor progressing and joy over someone in pain.

Then they start slowing down. What? Slow down? They’re not supposed to get father apart? We’ve been doing this for hours! The man in me wants to grab the phone, call the doctor, and tell him to get his over-educated self down here and do something about this. But that man also knows that he is not on his home turf, and he does not call the shots. You keep your head down and fire when ordered. So I wait.

Eventually the doctor gets his over-educated self down here and does something about it.

Things finally start to move, and eventually, we get to the final stages of labor. Generally, I can handle this. Watching the head emerge is a strange experience. There are at least three different things going through your head. One is “Holy…! That’s a person’s head in there!” Another is more like “Yikes! You’re gonna get it out of there?!” The last is much more “She’s almost here! Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!”

This time, however, maybe it was because it had been many hours since I’d eaten and been standing for a while, I nearly pass out. For some reason, I was really worried that everyone present would think I had a weak stomach. It’s the one area where I have any sort of authority. No one is listening to me anyway, so it really doesn’t matter.

Finally the baby comes out. Getting perfect Apgar scores.

Describing emotion is not something that language is really equipped to do, so this is where we enter the most difficult part of describing what goes on.

The baby comes out and the doctor puts her on mom. My wife gets to hold our new daughter. Tears stream down her face, from exhaustion, pain, relief, or joy, I can’t tell, but I’m pretty sure it’s all of the above. She (my wife, not the baby) is emitting sobs and laughter at the same time.

And the only think I find myself capable of doing is stroking my wife’s hair, and staring at this wonder, every so often uttering, “That’s our new daughter.” I’m a bit lost. I find that while I’m re-entering the part where I’m supposed to be in charge again, I have no idea what to do. I keep feeling moisture gathering at the corners of my eyes, but I’m not sure if I’m supposed to let them come out again, so I simply say “our new baby,” again. I’m vaguely aware that I sound, and probably look (what with the tears there but not coming) pretty stupid. But I pretend no one else is there. I need to hug someone, and I do my best to put my arms around my wife who has collapsed into the bed. I’m not entirely successful, but she puts her head against me. I say, “I love you. You did it.” The two thoughts aren’t really connected. I don’t love her because she did it, but they’re both coming through my head.

There’s a great urge to hold the baby, nonstop. I get annoyed at the nurse who took the baby and is still still cleaning/checking, and doing whatever else she’ll need during these first few moments. But I let her be.

I finally get my chance. She’s nine and a half pounds, which is quite large for a newborn (though not excessively so), but she’s small and fragile. How on earth does she have fingers smaller than the last segment of my pinky finger? This hair is so soft. Her cry isn’t in the least way bothersome. It almost sounds like conversation. There’s nothing so soft as a baby’s face on your own, either.

There’s a bond that’s almost visible. You can certainly feel it. I’m connected to this child. One part of me, the man that’s frustrated he hasn’t been in charge wants to yell out, “I made this!” But I think, no I didn’t, it all happened inside her. But how else do you explain this touching of spirits? She is truly my daughter. I’m swarmed by emotions: I’m possessive, protective, caring, tender, loving, and joyful. Like an elevation of something spiritual inside me. Yes, she is indeed mine, and now I have to spend twenty years teaching her to no longer be so much mine as she now is. Yet, that bond will always be there. No matter where she does, what she does, or who she’s with. She will always be mine.

It’s incomprehensible that I could be so intimately involved in such an incredible event, yet I am. “I love you,” I whisper again as I sit next to my wife and lean in close. I say it not to my wife, nor to my new daughter, but to them both. At this point, they are all that’s in the universe.

It will come as no surprise to anyone that I have little to no recollection of my earliest years. I was born on the 10th day of December 1973. I’m told it was cold, as it is wont to be in Cheyenne, Wyoming in the December months. The birth announcement proclaimed “Our stocking was stuffed with…” (me). This part I know because I’ve seen the announcement. Which now that I think about it is odd, as the only way we announced the birth of my own children was via email (and phone calls to our closest family).

My mother kept a baby book faithfully. At least it looks like she did. There are two books covering my life to about age 8. My older brother Mike and I both have really thick ones . The books for my younger brother and my sister are both considerably smaller. Which is merely an observation that the trait of losing enthusiasm projects after I lose momentum over time is something I inherited, and I am in no way accountable for it.

Anyway, when I was born I had one brother. Mike. Mike was two and a half years older than me and the bane of my existence from about age 5 until I was 15 (the year he went away to school for the first time). He was also my most frequent playmate for most of my younger years, and he taught me most of the games I played with my toys and the mannerisms I have for playing with those games. He’s probably still the biggest influence in my life as far as the patterns of my life and sense of humor. This is a fact that I will never again admit to or acknowledge, so make the most of it now.

We lived on the Laramie Air Force Base at the time, though I’m not sure what rank my father was. Some time in my early childhood I know that he was a captain, and I remember also at about age 6 or 7 praying as a family that dad would make the promotion to major (he did – though maybe he was older than I remember). At any rate, I don’t have memories of living in Wyoming (and there are nights I thank God for that) as we moved during my second summer, to Orem, Utah.

Dad had taken an assignment to instruct ROTC at BYU in Provo. I had no idea of this at the time, though I have a vague memory of my first (and only) college football game. It was cold. I fell asleep. We left before it ended. I’m not sure who my family was rooting for or who won, and it would probably only traumatize me to know because while Dad was teaching at BYU, he and Mom and I believe my mother’s parents had all graduated from the Y’s arch-rival, the University of Utah.

I have a dozen or more memories of driving down what I now know is University Blvd in Orem and seeing the Provo Temple lit up. This was always after returning from visits to Gramma and Grampa (Mom’s side) who lived in Bountiful just north of Salt Lake City. Still do, for that matter. I don’t know if my little girls will have that same memory, but it’d be kind of neat if they did – after all, we drove the same stretch as a family once a month or so after visiting my grandparents while I was going to school at BYU.

I also have vague memories of our house in Orem. We lived next to an empty swimming pool, which was fun to play in. And we had those broomstick horses that Mike and I rode on all through the back yard playing cowboys. My first dirty rhyme was learned in the gutter (literally) in front of that house. It came about because someone had a Mr. Peabody toy from the Rocky and Bullwinkle show:

I’m Mr. Peabody

I want my mommy

I need to go potty

Yeah, back off. I was three or four and lived in Utah Valley. Cut me some slack will ya?

Other fun things involved catching grasshoppers using our blankies. The method was to throw out the blanket so it was spread over the bug, and you pinned down the sides and slowly lifted until you could get a hand on the bug. Which you then let jump off (just to watch it jump, because we were boys, and they were bugs, and that was enough). Sometimes we just nudged them to make them jump. To be honest, I don’t remember ever torturing bugs (until I was 11, when I killed a slug by shaking salt on it…) or killing ants with a magnifying glass.

My earliest definable memory takes place in Orem as well, when I was about 3. My mother, like most good Mormon mothers get at least once (however short lived is the effort), was getting into food storage. I remember drinking a lot of nasty powdered milk at this time (I was so very grateful when that kick ended). My mother ground her own wheat for bread, and it being the mid- to late-seventies, we had this monstrous grinder with an open drive belt, which my brother and I loved to watch. The grain moved prettily as it was funneled toward the grinder, and plus here was this big engine (a temptation for all little boys, I’m sure). One time while watching the grinding, and for some still unknown reason – I think it has something to do with me being meant to have this mark on my finger – I decided I wanted to know how it would feel to have the belt move along the inside of the second knuckle of my right index finger (though I was familiar with very few of those vocabulary words). Being a very scientific three years old, I determined the only way to find out was to stick out my finger.

Screaming ensued.

My second definable memory takes place in a hospital or doctor’s office – I’m not sure which – with a trained medical professional removing stitches from my hand. I remember nothing in between these two related events, but I had a lot of stitches. Apparently I had severed tendons and my hand had been cut open all the way down and across my palm in order for them to retrieve the tendons and reconnect them. Today the scar only stretches about half an inch down toward my thumb and half an inch into the palm, but there is a huge mass of scar tissue in that knuckle today, and I can only bend my finger about half way.

The scar quickly became part of my identity. There was a corner on my blanky that was harder than the others which I used to like to hold against the scar. My family still remarks on it. Over the years, I’ve kind of developed the idea of that scar as a symbol of the protection the Lord has given me over my life. I’ve been in many accidents, many of which could have killed or at least crippled me, but I’ve never suffered anything more injurious than that scar on my finger. I reckon that the Lord had something he needed me to accomplish. When I received a Patriarchal Blessing at age 18, I was told that I would bring into this world worthy spirits. I jokingly remarked that I was safe from any serious harm until my wife was pregnant with a second child. As I now have three beautiful daughters, all of whom are worthy, I’ve decided to start being a little more thoughtful and cautious (though I still want a motorcycle); the Lord might have had something else in mind for me, but no sense in taking any chances right?

I remember that I had a broken or sprained arm once in Orem as well, but I don’t know how I got it. I just remember playing in the backyard once with my broomstick horse with my arm in a sling (it’s hard to ride a horse like that, even one made from a broomstick).

Presaging my destiny to write and observe the beauty in all that surrounds us, I still have a slight memory of going out into the backyard and seeing the view of the mountains. Mt. Timpanogas being the most prominent. I remember thinking how wonderful the world was. As I was ever spiritually minded (or at least, have always believed myself to be), I also remember realizing in some small way how positioned I was in God’s plan. It’s not something I could put into words at the time, but it was a feeling. Knowing that I was on the earth, and the earth was in the heavens, and that I was an individual. Maybe you think this more of a psychological self-consciousness than anything else. But I knew it was a spiritual event.

My family was (still is) LDS. Mormons. Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We went to church every Sunday for several hours. At this point, I believe the meetings were still scattered, so we’d go once for Sacrament meeting, again for Primary, etc. In primary I once got a little certificate of some sort of achievement. I have no idea what it was for. It had a picture of a young boy and a picture of a young girl on it. So I did something very typical for young boys: I crossed out the picture of the girl (well, they were ICKY!). Mike told me when he saw it that I would regret that later. Probably because he said that, when I saw the certificate once when I was much older, I did regret it and tried to erase it. It wouldn’t come off.

In Primary we learned a lot of songs like “Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam” and so on. I still remember the first time I learned “The primary colors are one, two, three / red, yellow and blue.” I don’t remember the symbology, but I’m pretty sure there was supposed to be some. It’s ok; they don’t sing that song anymore. At any rate, I learned about Jesus, and the story of Joseph Smith, and many other Bible and Book of Mormon stories while I was still very young. And I’ve never doubted them. This could make you think I’m brainwashed, but as I grew the maturity of my belief grew as well. Sure, I’ve questioned my beliefs, and tried them, and had to learn more. But I’ve always had faith in the Savior and the scriptures, whatever misdeeds and actions I’ve taken. I know that the Church is of God, and that the Book of Mormon is true.

This will be another in the continuing series of articles about writer’s block that I write in order to keep me writing. In case you wanted to know, this technique works somewhat sporadically for me. Frequently, I don’t have the motivation to write anything. Since starting these articles I’ve written somewhere around 10k in about a week. Only about a third of that are these thoughts on writing and writers block. Something about just getting material down on paper (or in pixels, as the case may be… and is) frees up a process and allows me to write more. Heck, it gets me typing instead of just staring at the screen, or, more commonly, playing a few levels of Oni, Diablo II, Neverwinter Nights, or the like.

So, I guess I’ll just stick with my comparison to the writing process to the flow of water, a comparison I’ve used many times in the past and will continue to use in the future, I think. It’s a good metaphor.

In this case, I’m looking at writer’s block as a dam. It’s blocking the flow of words from wherever they originate. Somewhere in my brain I suppose, but that’s a topic for another thought. But by simply getting a trickle started. Just the tiniest fracture in the dam wall, and a small amount of water begins to come through. This widens the hole, and more and more water comes out. Supposedly this would result in thousands and thousands of words gushing out, rampaging down valleys, drowning unsuspecting villagers and cows, destroying homes and businesses, causing millions of dollars of damage…

- wait. I think I’m confusing which is the metaphor, and which is my subject.

At any rate, my point is, if you (I) begin writing, it increases the likelihood that you (I) will be able to write more. And, as indicated by my experience with my last week’s writing, this writing won’t be just useless, you’ll (I’ll) be more enabled to write more prolifically on the subjects that you (I) most want to write and which you (I) feel are most important.

Of course, this assumes that one moves relatively quickly between. I suppose it probably varies from person to person, but if you write a little bit, then take a break (such as watching the Lord of the Rings Special Edition DVD – guess what I just got…) for a while, it hurts your “groove.” Stay in the groove, the groove is your friend.

So far, a lot of the things I’ve mentioned about writing seem to be little tricks. However, writing is not simply a collection of little tricks. Make no mistake about that. There is nothing easy about being a writer (with certain exceptions we all tend to believe in, like Stephen King, who apparently writes fifteen novels before lunch). Writing requires patience, discipline, and hard work (much of that work involving your head, high rates of speed, and impact with a heavy, blunt object such as a desk or keyboard).

If you don’t discipline yourself, often times forcing yourself to write, if you don’t have the patience to rewrite pages that aren’t your best work, if you don’t have bust your hump to get projects done by deadlines, then you won’t complete your writings.

Yes, there are techniques to help you work on writing. To get you into the “groove.” However, these techniques have nothing magical about them. If these techniques work for someone, it’s because there is a psychological enabling that is functioning there.

All this is to say that you can’t do automatic writing for fifteen minutes, then go watch Maury Povich and Judge Judy and expect to come back to the table (the one that holds your paper, typewriter, computer, or whatever you’re using to write) and write quickly.

Automatic writing, as I see it, will accomplish three basic things. One, it will help you come up with ideas, much like brainstorming. When you’re just writing to write, ideas you may have otherwise rejected come out and have a chance to develop into good ones. Automatic writing will help you be able to write new things that you hadn’t even planned before. They may help you with your current project, or they may help you come up with a new one (just don’t get so distracted that you don’t finish your current project–discipline, remember?).

Two, automatic writing will help you develop your writing skills. “Perfect practice makes perfect” my arse. You can’t be perfect until you learn to be perfect. You have to make a mistake so you can see what your mistakes are so you can fix them. That’s what practice is for. Automatic writing allows you to root out the bad juju you have in you, release the impulses and feelings you have that are working against your more serious writing, and work on your word choice.

Finally, automatic writing gets you in the groove, as I have been discussing. It helps you jump-start the writing process. But none of these things will work if you jump from automatic writing to an unrelated activity before doing your “serious writing.” You’ll lose your train of thought, resulting in the loss of ideas. You’ll lose any of the cathartic effects you may have gained. And you’ll lose your groove, and if you have a problem with writer’s block, well, then, you just wasted your time, didn’t you? It’d be like doing warm up stretches, then eating a big lunch before you go do your exercises.

Use automatic writing and the other tools you learn properly, to become a better writer.

My collection of Supergirl comic books is worth around $400.

I fear what this will do to me.

I have a number of items that I’ve collected over the years that are worth some money. For starters, I have some CLASSIC (meaning old) 45s from the 40s and 50s (I defy you to make smooth sounding sentence with that many numbers used as nouns) featuring Les Paul, Louis Armstrong, and others that are still in great shape. Haven’t checked their value, but to me, that was the whole point. They’re sure to be worth something to collectors (more if I had some Elvis in there, which I had within my grasp and lost) and while I am a half-hearted collector, I looked at them as less of a physical artifact and more as a collection of great music. I.e., I (brace yourself if you’re a hard core collector of anything, because this is shocking) listened to them. More than once. Satchmo can blow. Les can shred. Those are great tunes.

See, that was how I approached old things. I open my action figures and set them up in battle scenes on my desk (I’m infamous at the office; every time I bring in a new one I’m asked repeatedly where I’ll find room – oh, there’s room all right…). If I can ever develop a plan to get my old Kenner Star Wars action figures back from my cousin (my mom gave them to him, supposedly with my permission) I’d play with those too.

I read my old comics. I listen to old records. I drink from the crystal and eat off the china whenever I have an excuse to do so (such as I wanted to and I can make it look romantic so my wife does not object).

Things are too be used. For example, why would anyone make a stained glass window if we were not to look at it? Maybe that’s a bad example, since you don’t generally handle a stained glass window to gaze upon it. But you do a book. What value is a book if it is not read?

To give a better example, I was recently in Ireland and looked at the Book of Kells. The Book of Kells is an extremely old hand-written, illuminated copy of the four gospels. But it’s still used. True, it’s extremely limited. The closest I got was from the other side of a few inches of glass. But researches and historians still look at it. Because it’s not worth anything just sitting there in the dark.

If I wanted something I could just look at, I’d buy a poster. In fact, I have. Supergirl is one of them, as a matter of fact (she’s right over the X-Men figures and earns a lot of ridicule from my co-workers and boss). I probably wouldn’t buy a statue, because that would just tempt me to explore it. It’s also possible I’d do the same with a painting, feeling the textures and the brush strokes. Not sure I’d do that, but I’m sure I’d be tempted.

After all, they’re just things.

But now I’ve had how much those things are worth quantified for me. The closest I came to that before was either when a dorm-mate offered to buy my “War” era U2 import singles or when I managed to sell a copy of one of the Robin issues from the Cataclysm story line to a local comic shop for more than cover value because I’d gotten it from another state (and extra copies, my local store had failed to get it).

But when I saw the price! I was impressed. Suddenly I was loathe to let anyone else read my Supergirl comics. Now, don’t get me wrong. It’s a great story. It’s worth reading. Fortunately, even if this revelation corrupts my perception of what “things” are worth and to be used for, the first nine issues (the best ones) are collected in a graphic novel format.

It may seem a silly problem. After all, most of you are screaming in horror at the fact that I’m abusing these items and casting my financial future into ruin.

But see, it’s a philosophical problem. So long as I didn’t know the value, even if I had a suspicion of what it was worth, I could keep my nonconformist stance that said things were to be used, not stored for their potential future value. I kept them in shape, because it’s easier to enjoy a record if it’s not scratched and easier to read a book that’s not torn up.

But now I have this sudden fear of ruining my items. I’m too careful. Am I going to continue to enjoy them? I don’t know. But I hope too. I look at this as a temptation to corrupt my quasi-virtuous stance of enjoying the world around me instead of placing monetary value on it. Really when it comes down to it, this is a religious issue. Do I enjoy the manufacturing/artistic/craftsmanship capabilities that we’ve been given by God? Or do I reduce it to a line of $ and ¢.

And ultimately, it’s a deeper question. Does reducing artifacts to monetary worth dehumanize me? What will archeologists in 2000 years say about us? Will the judge us too materialistic? It strikes me that modern archeologists are grateful for any preserved artifact they can find. But it also strikes me that they’d find perfectly preserved artifacts that were never used extremely curious. After all, what is the true value of an artifact that was never culturally significant?

I was thinking a little about what makes me write, continuing the thought of the last entry. Especially what makes me write things like this series of explorations, or the “Piece of Writing” series that gained me moderate fame in high school.

It also occurred to me that a great deal of the scholarship in history, literature, religion, the arts, and philosophy stems from the fact that we either

• Don’t have a record of what the original creator or thinker stated or thought about their production or deeds

Or

• If we do have such a record, it is unclear or debatable in meaning.

I was thinking this was deeply rooted to my need for verbose explication of my intentions and meanings. Sure, vague is fun, but I also find it intensely enjoyable to speak or write at length on a simple phrase or sentence that I feel is either vague or can be interpreted in more than one way.

On a side note, this rarely applies to when I attempt to be ridiculously funny, where I expect that if people don’t understand it or misinterpret it they simply have no sense of humor. Or being perverse (or dense). In none of those cases, do I usually feel I have the time or energy to deal with them.

Anyway, as I was saying, there’s a connection. I write because I don’t want someone in a thousand years to be debating about what I said or believed. Every thing, especially things I say, deserves exegesis. Careful exegesis. Exegesis to death. (I can imaging the people of Athens condemning Socrates to death by exegesis, except that it would probably kill many of them long before it began to phase that distinguished pedant).

Being misunderstood is one of the greatest fears I have. Which is a problem, because I live with it constantly. I once stated (if you’re going to cite someone, cite the best) that no one is truly understood, but that each person is probably has more emotional, motivational, and/or intellectual depth than they’re usually given credit for. I think I regard that as a tragedy. I even stated that one of the traits I’d demand in a wife were that she understand me. In the end, I believed I settled for wanted to understand me and tries to do so. Which is much more reasonable since, as I said, we don’t understand each other as people.

So we don’t have understanding, yet I fear not having it. So I must live in perpetual fear. Well, not really. More like perpetual frustration. I say something and I’m misunderstood, but I go on living. And hence I continue to write. Because I have this theory that the more I say, the easier it will be to understand me. Though I suppose it’s possible that I’m just providing more to be misunderstood. I think that’s the less likely of the two because I talk most about things I’ve already said.

On the other hand, another contending theory for my behavior is that I’m an egoist and just like to hear (or see) myself talk. This is also possible. I like to think there’s a mixture of the two. Am I making myself clear?

Or do I need to write another 550 words?